Christodoulides joins 17 EU leaders in call to end budget rebates
A letter signed by President Nikos Christodoulides and 16 other European leaders urges an end to EU contribution rebates and protection for key spending programmes.
Brussels, Belgium. President Nikos Christodoulides joined 16 other European heads of government on Thursday in signing a letter urging the European Union to abolish the rebates granted to five net contributors to its budget.
Leaders seek changes to contributions
The letter followed a Brussels meeting of the EU’s friends of cohesion group. Its 17 member states are advocating potential reductions in agriculture and cohesion funding under the next multiannual financial framework, which covers 2028–2034.
The signatories argued that preferential adjustments linked to gross national income were incompatible with a fair, modernised EU budget. Both member-state contributions and the resulting rebates are calculated using GNI.
Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden currently benefit from the arrangements. Germany receives the largest annual rebate, exceeding €3.6 billion, while the Netherlands and Sweden each receive more than €1 billion a year.
Concerns over a smaller budget
The leaders also urged the EU to maintain its budget’s ability to deliver, noting that proposals presented by the Cypriot government in June and subsequently by the Irish government on Saturday had reduced its overall size.
According to the letter, the total reduction amounts to 1.02 per cent of EU GNI when Next Generation EU payments are excluded. That extraordinary European Commission package was introduced to support member states’ recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The signatories said the eventual agreement needed to enable the budget to respond to both established and emerging priorities without undermining key policies.
Protection sought for national and regional allocations
The letter also sought to safeguard funding envelopes for national and regional partnership plans. These would allocate money to member states for purposes including agriculture and cohesion projects, which aim to narrow inequalities between Europe’s regions.
The EU currently intends to invest €865bn through these plans across the bloc.
Discussing its latest proposal, the Irish government said most member states had requested that national allocations for cohesion, agriculture and fisheries policies remain within the national and regional partnership plans.
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