Ursula von der Leyen’s plan for the EU’s biggest ever budget has sparked uproar inside the European Commission, with colleagues warning the president’s ultra-centralised style has already compromised the €2tn cash call.
Prepared for months and largely kept secret from von der Leyen’s team of commissioners, the draft 2028-2034 budget plan prompted rare internal pushback that forced significant concessions in the hours before publication.
The revolt has underscored the long-bubbling resentment at her “rubber stamp” approach towards the commission after years of walled-off decision-making that critics say has made Brussels inflexible and prone to mis-steps.
“I have never seen it this bad,” said one senior diplomat from an EU member state who has worked on the past three budget negotiations. “Nobody knew what they were getting or what they were paying until the last minute.”
The €2tn spending plan, which will be funded by national capitals and new taxes levied directly by the commission on companies, tobacco and other items, will replace the existing €1.2tn budget in 2028.
The chaotic backroom negotiations, and the numerous objections from commissioners on everything from the scale of new taxes to spending levels for poorer regions, set the stage for brutal talks with European capitals, officials said. The EU budget, one of Brussels’ most complex and fraught negotiations, needs unanimous support of 27 member states.
“If it’s this bad inside the commission, who knows how bad it will get when the real negotiations with the member states start,” said a second senior EU diplomat.
Within hours of its publication, von der Leyen’s home country of Germany — the EU’s biggest member state — rejected her budget proposal.
“A comprehensive increase in the EU budget is unacceptable at a time when all member states are making significant efforts to consolidate their national budgets,” government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said. “Therefore, we will not be able to accept the commission’s proposal.”
The budget’s final approval in Brussels was chaotic. A meeting of the heads of cabinets of the commissioners — known as Hebdo — to debate the final proposal began on Monday night and concluded just before midday on Wednesday.
The talks were abruptly postponed and restarted mid-discussion throughout Tuesday, according to two people present, before continuing until almost 2am and restarting at 8am on Wednesday.
“It’s not surprising that a Hebdo on the budget lasts more than 15 hours. What is surprising is that it’s [the evening before adoption],” said a second EU official. “The frustration is shared at all levels of the commission.”
On the eve of the proposal, von der Leyen’s own budget commissioner Piotr Serafin, who is tasked with selling the significantly enlarged budget to EU capitals, had “no clue” of the complex formula that would determine how much each country would receive, according to a person involved in the discussions.
Despite other commissioners making pleas for advanced notice of the budget breakdown, they were only given final figures of their funding in the minutes before a meeting scheduled to sign it off. That meeting started four hours later than scheduled.
One commissioner asked von der Leyen during the meeting: “Why are we just getting a debrief?” according to a third EU official.
“They were basically asked to rubber-stamp this thing . . . That’s not the way you run the commission,” said a fourth EU official.
As opposition mounted in the week leading up to the proposal, von der Leyen made several concessions. These included ringfencing €500bn in direct subsidies to farmers and fishermen, reinstating a social spending fund, maintaining specific support for poorer regions, and doubling the threshold for a new corporate tax to a turnover of more than €100mn.
Von der Leyen rejected criticism of her management style: “I spoke to each and every commissioner one after the next,” she told reporters after the budget had been unveiled. “There was a lot of contention . . . not everyone was satisfied.”
“The last four weekends they have all been working. . . after midnight,” von der Leyen said of senior EU officials. “This is a marathon to get there because it is a huge budget . . . It is normal that at the end there is a crunch time.”
She added: “There is strong support. The collegial decision is taken.”
The budget will take up to two years to negotiate, von der Leyen told reporters following the release of the proposal.
The commission said that despite the almost-doubling in size of the budget, member states’ contributions would not increase. Instead, the shortfall will be made up by “own resources” or new EU levies worth around €400bn.
These include taxes on big companies, e-waste, a fee on packages from third countries, and hikes in tobacco taxes, as well as increases in existing sources of revenue like custom duties and VAT.
Although that would in theory raise around €58bn in annual EU revenue, according to the EU executive, it would still not cover the full increase in the budget’s size.
“They live in their own world,” said one treasury official in a member state.
Frustrations over von der Leyen’s centralised style have long been simmering, both within the team of commissioners and the body’s civil servants.
Senior officials say von der Leyen and Björn Seibert, her powerful chief of staff, have narrowed the circle of decision-making even further in their second term. Dissenting voices from von der Leyen’s first five-year term, such as France’s Thierry Breton and Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager, did not return for her second stint.
Despite the unrest inside her commission, only Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi formally registered his dissent during Wednesday’s meeting to approve the budget, according to people briefed on the discussion.
“In order to get something done, you need a pull-aside with Björn,” said a fifth EU official. “But that is not a way to run a European Commission.”
Additional reporting by Laura Pitel in Berlin
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