By Jan Strupczewski and Gabriela Baczynska
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany, the current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, urged the European Parliament on Thursday to speed up talks and work on weekends to agree on 1.8 trillion euros worth of the bloc’s next budget and a linked pandemic recovery.
The European Parliament must endorse the package agreed by EU governments after a tortuous four-day summit in July, before the money can start flowing to help revive the EU economy from the deepest recession in the bloc’s history.
But in exchange for is consent, the EU parliament wants governments to spend more money on research and development and to provide a legally binding timetable for the introduction of new EU-wide taxes to pay for the stimulus spending.
Crucially, parliament also wants a clear link between the EU money and observing the rule of law — a condition watered down by Poland and Hungary, both under EU investigations for flouting democratic checks and balances.
“I am very concerned that the negotiations are currently progressing too slowly. We must increase the frequency of negotiations significantly. We have offered the European Parliament to negotiate through the weekends as well,” German ambassador to the EU, Michael Clauss, told Reuters.
Because the EU’s 1.1 trillion euro budget for 2021-2027 and the 750 billion recovery package have to be agreed unanimously, Warsaw and Budapest have the power to hold up the money for the other 25 EU countries if a firm rule of law link is introduced.
“On the rule of law mechanism, we are in intensive talks with the EU member states,” Claus said, noting the negotiations were “extremely complicated” and that Berlin would soon present a proposal to other EU governments on the exact wording of the rule-of-law conditions for accessing EU cash.
While EU lawmakers generally wants to tighten the mechanism, it would risk a veto from Warsaw and Budapest if they saw it as a real threat to receiving the generous handouts from the bloc.
Clauss said that on EU-wide taxes, governments and parliament were “already close to each other”. But the issue is tricky because it concerns tax-setting powers jealously guarded by national parliaments.
(Writing by Jan Strupczewski, Editing by Gabriela Baczynska)
