EU’s richest countries to meet secretly in Vienna to negotiate organization’s budget

Northern European countries are gathering in Vienna on Thursday to forge a common front ahead of two years of fierce negotiations on the EU’s next seven-year budget, Politico writes.

It’s the first time that top officials from the EU’s richer countries — including France, Germany and the Nordics — have convened in the same room to build a strategy on the European Commission’s controversial €1.816 trillion budget proposal.

On one side are the affluent “net payers” — spanning Sweden to France — who contribute more than they receive from the EU budget and are generally in favor of a slimmer cash pot.

There are obvious differences within each camp. For example, net-paying France and the Netherlands have wildly different agendas on issues such as EU-level debt, which Paris favors and The Hague opposes.

On the issue of agricultural subsidies, France is more aligned with high-spending Poland than with members of its own club.

But countries try to resolve such differences within their respective clubs, where they settle on key positions such as what the overall size of the budget should be. The group meeting in Vienna on Thursday will be led by the EU’s two powerhouses.

In the other camp, Poland usually takes the lead as the country getting the most money out of the EU budget.