Ireland has put the first real number on the table. On Saturday, the country that chairs EU governments until the end of the year published a compromise for the 2028-34 budget: about €1.6 trillion, an 8% cut to what the Commission first asked for.
Nobody is happy. That may be the point.
The Irish presidency says its "negotiating box" saves 8%, or €141 billion. The sums need a footnote. The Commission's original proposal was close to €2 trillion in current prices. The presidency restates that as €1.76 trillion in 2025 prices, strips out seven years of inflation, and takes its 8% from there. Against the headline figure the gap looks wider. Even so, the Irish total is about 30% above the 2021-27 budget.
The cuts are uneven. Regional development, agriculture and fisheries, the biggest block, lose 3%. The areas the Commission says Europe needs most, competitiveness and security, lose 13%. The text also leans on new money: about €55 billion from customs duties, a share of the revenue from selling carbon emission permits, and an annual lump-sum contribution from large companies operating in the EU.
Minister Thomas Byrne, who presented the text, said it "acts to bridge the many differences between the member states" and brings the Union closer to resolving what he called the "budgetary trilemma": paying for new priorities such as defence and research while keeping the old policies funded.
The reaction split along the usual lines, and both camps said no. Sweden's EU affairs minister, Jessica Rosencrantz, called the proposal "wildly unaffordable". Dutch finance minister Eelco Heinen said the Netherlands cannot accept it. Germany has already said it will not negotiate seriously without cuts of hundreds of billions of euros. For the frugal bloc, 8% is not enough.
Parliament sits at the other end. MEPs want a budget 10% larger than the Commission's, and they warned that the Irish plan would weaken Europe and would not win their consent. That matters, because Parliament must approve the budget. Meanwhile, Spain, Italy and Poland want current levels of farm and regional money protected, and the Commission keeps pressing for more defence and industrial spending.
Leaders will discuss the text at the European Council in Brussels on 15-16 October. They will not finish. The budget needs the agreement of all 27 governments, and European Council President António Costa has aimed for a deal in December. The Irish presidency ends that month, which gives it a strong reason to push and a weak position to push from.
The Irish text does two things. It makes a cut politically real, which the frugal states wanted. It also shows how little room is left: take 13% from competitiveness and security, and the Commission's own priorities start to look unfunded.
Expect the summit to produce no breakthrough and a long list of red lines. The real signal will be which side blinks first on the new revenue. If the €55 billion of new sources survives, the budget fight shifts from how much to cut to who pays. If it does not, the arithmetic gets harder for everyone, including Parliament.
