EU Budget: A Classic Compromise
Updated: 6:21pm UK, Friday 08 February 2013
Accounting sleight of hand has been used to secure the approval of member states, while the EU institutions grumble on the sidelines.
Germany hailed a "good and important" deal, for Spain it was "good news", while Italy declared the deal to be "satisfactory".
For David Cameron the negotiations, which see the budget reduced for the first time in 56 years, were a "success" but must not be "oversold".
So smiles all round, because few "red lines" were crossed.
That made it an extremely difficult task for European Council president Herman van Rompuy.
He had to make convincing cuts to the EU's seven year budget ceiling, while protecting rebates, the common agricultural policy, structural and cohesion funds (designed to give a helping hand to struggling regions) and try to boost projects aimed at plumping growth.
The negotiators were left with little wiggle room - so a programme called "Connecting Europe" got it in the neck.
That is a 50bn euro project designed to finance large-scale infrastructure projects across the union from motorways to digital highways. Its grant was slashed by a quarter.
That, together with a cut to plans to kickstart investment in poorer areas of the EU, was met with howls of outrage from the European Parliament which, under the Lisbon treaty revision, can now reject the package and send it back to the Council.
The Parliament's president Martin Schulz said the gap between the commitment ceiling (the money which can be promised to fund future projects) and the payment figure (the EU's actual credit card limit) is too high.
He warns there is a blocking majority - but as MEPs will vote on the financial framework in a secret ballot, will they really want to start the whole process again with elections looming in 2014?
But this is where the two limits help: budget hawks (UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany) can say they have kept actual spending down, while the countries arguing for more financial assistance can say they limited the hit on spending commitments.
A win-win for many member states; although not in the eyes of many those in the Commission or the Parliament, who see cuts to growth and infrastructure projects as an attack on the EU's core purpose.
The political issue for David Cameron is that he appears to have made good on his promise to achieve at least real-terms freeze.
But that of course does not necessarily translate into a better deal for the British taxpayer, who will still have to fork out more cash as the EU expands east, with poorer countries needing more financial assistance.
At the post deal news conference, he said the net contributions will rise, but by less than had been feared.
This is not because we are generous to a fault. The argument runs that by putting more cash in their pockets of Europe's poorest, it benefits everyone in the single market.
But for the 27 leaders, this constitutes a box ticked. No messy annual budget rollovers and an end to the protracted negotiations which have tied up the so-called sherpas and their number crunchers for months.
It frees them up to concentrate on the even thornier issue of rescuing the single currency.
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