Mood of austerity triggers frantic EU clean-up
Brussels is attempting to switch into austerity mode in 2011, amid anger over EU funds that wind up in dog-fitness clubs and Elton John gigs.
However, efforts to slash costs are likely to hit a brick wall -- what one senior official describes as a "Rubik's Cube" of competing interests over the lion's share of European Union monies.
France defends farm funding, some 40 percent of all spending, tooth and nail; Poland likewise resists all moves on cohesion funding, or grants for poorer regions; while Britain jealously guards the hard-won rebate Margaret Thatcher secured in the 1980s.
If only small margins remain after the three great pillars of EU spending, cost-cutting is nevertheless the talk of the town in Brussels.
It was Britain's new Prime Minister David Cameron who blew a wind of austerity into the home of the European Union last year, when he launched a campaign to crimp the 2011 budget.
He initially wanted it frozen, but secured a 2.9 percent-increase ceiling instead of a planned six percent rise.
"The challenge for the European Union in the coming years will not be to spend more, but to spend better," Cameron said in a letter co-signed with France and Germany, and backed by Finland and the Netherlands.
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