Remarks by Commissioner Serafin at the General Affairs Council in Brussels

Thank you Thomas, dear Presidency, dear Ministers,

This is my fourth MFF negotiation. So I have to admit that some of the discussions come with a large sense of déjà-vu. Many positions are quite predictable, as they have been consistently repeated over the last decades.

Sometimes, it feels like that famous movie ‘Groundhog day', where an entire village is waking up to the exact same day over and over again.

But it should not be like this. It's high time to change the script. This MFF proposal is not like the proposals we had seven, fourteen or twenty one years ago.

So what is different this time around? Let me mention four elements.

First, there are of course calls in the Council to cut the Commission proposal. This is not new. But what is new is that now we are speaking about cutting a greatly modernised budget. Our proposal focuses more than ever before on competitiveness, defence and security.  This is necessary to tackle problems which one single Member State often cannot address alone. And this modernisation was not achieved simply by adding up new spendings to the old ones. Serious change of priorities is already reflected in the Commission proposal.  

Second, of course national contributions to the budget are again a hot topic. This is also not new. But the context is different this time aroud. The Commission took into account the strained fiscal situation in many Member States and proposed a stabilisation of the national contributions on the basis of the 2027 numbers. I emphasise this, because I see many different ways of computing national contributions. It seems that there is a competition going on between capitals to come up with numbers that show that their national contribution increases the most. This is not really helpful. It is important that we build a common understanding of the actual numbers, and that we present them in the most objective way, leaving as least as possible scope for creative accounting.