Agreeing on a 1000 billion Euro is no easy task, but you don´t need a lengthy analysis to understand who wants to raise the EU budget for the coming seven years and who wants to lower it. Just look at the graphic showing the net contributions.
To add a bit more detail: as the largest net payer Germany is officially in favor of budget cuts, but in the end Merkel will be willing to make a deal as subsidizing Europe does wonders for their own economy. Without that huge market German industry would be dead in the water.
France gets most of the old agricultural subsidies so they support a high budget as long as its not spend on innovation, market development and other sensible spendings. Most of France is deserted rural area and can only exist by receiving mindless agricultural subsidies
The UK always fights hard to get the budget down as the Brits just hate Europe so to survive politically Cameron needs to come down with another victory. They could of course go the German way and actually profit from the large common market, but British business is still unaware that the rest of the world and especially their favorites, the US, are not the willing market for their products and services. Old perceptions rule.
At the other side you have the net receivers. They are united in their demand for a higher budget.
The possible outcome: severe cuts in the staff budget so that everyone keeps his own money stream from Brussels, be it agricultural subsidies, support for aging and dying industries or ´growth´ (innovation subsidies).
To put this into perspective: the total staff costs including salaries, buildings, equipment are about 0,6% of the total budget and in the current proposals just 8 billion per year. Even more perspective: the staff budget for just the city of Paris is about the same amount and even the smallest country in Europe has a higher budget.
Time to cut into the senseless money stream towards dying industries and agriculture or do we really need to find pennies in the staff budget? #Europe #politics
Damn it Reuters put some actual values on your charts
Thank you! very interesting!
Agree with +Maarten Seghers without values in the charts the diagrams are pretty but useless.
"They could of course go the German way and actually profit from the large common market,"
Germany is the UK's #1 trading partner. If the UK wasn't profiting from the common market, it wouldn't still be a member.
"British business is still unaware that the rest of the world and especially their favorites, the US, are not the willing market for their products and services"
The UK's exports to outside the EU now surpass exports to the EU. The balance of trade is roughly 50/50 EU/Non-EU. Turns out that there is a willing market for UK goods and service outside the EU.
Here's December's statistics – http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/uktrade/uk-trade/december-2012/stb-uk-trade–december-2012.html
Of course there is +Scot McSweeney-Roberts It´s a caricature of all countries wishes as it´s just a short summary. Facts however never seem to stop the British sentiment towards Europe.
If you sit down with British entrepreneurs they rarely look towards Europe, but do eye the US.
+Maarten Seghers +chris vighagen Germany is around €7.5bn per year net. France 4,9, almost the same for Italy and the UK, both at 4,7. The Netherlands pay 1,9 billion a year net. Poland got €11.8bn in 2011.
The rest can be deducted from the scale in the graphic, but I admit that Reuters could have done the hard work.
Why does Poland get so much?
+Max Huijgen thanks, I more or less knew those numbers.
I just get annoyed by people who put out charts with specific data or even worse, unlabeled axis, to me that defeats the purpose of making a chart in the first place.
+Scot McSweeney-Roberts Poland can claim most subsidies for poor regions which need development. That kind of subsidizing is labeled ´stimulating cohesion´ in Euro jargon, meaning these inequalities within Europe need to be solved otherwise an ´Union´ is impossible.
+Scot McSweeney-Roberts because Poland is a relatively poor country which has a lot of old industries and agriculture, areas in which the EU invests a lot of subsidies. It is also a big country with almost 40.000.000 inhabitants. So while the total investment in euros is high, it is less per capita than Greece
+Max Huijgen thanks for the data. However I can not see a scale anywhere in that image. Had there been one then all would have been ok.
Im allergic to shoddy statistics.
So, pretty much the countries that experience winter vs. those that don't.