EU commissioner says budget debate is a ‘dismal compromise’
The EU’s commissioner for the digital agenda Neelie Kroes has described the debate on Europe’s budget as a ‘dismal compromise’ between national political opportunism and subsidy dependence.
The debate, Kroes said, should not centre on the size of the budget but on how it is spent.
The negotiations were not ‘based on vision’ but were ‘meant to convey that “Brussels” has been taken down a peg or two and that politicians have managed to wrest something from the jaws of the Brussels beast for their voters’, Kroes said in a column for the Financieele Dagblad.
European leaders on Friday agreed a deal to slightly reduce the EU’s budget for the period 2014 to 2020. The Netherlands, in particular, managed to keep most of its rebate.
Kroes is a former minister for the VVD Liberal party.
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