When certain governments discuss the EU’s next seven-year budget, their first reflex seems to be: what can we cut? That is the wrong question. The real question is not how much the EU budget costs, but how much an insufficient budget will cost us all.  

Economic benefits of EU membership are estimated to be two to six times the financial contribution of individual member states. For every euro we contribute to the EU budget, we can receive up to six euros in return.

That is the power of investing together: European investment delivers more than fragmented national spending. And it does so with a budget of just one percent of EU GNI, while national budgets can reach 50 percent.

The EU budget is not simply money transferred from national capitals to Brussels: it is an investment that creates value benefiting citizens through stronger economies, better infrastructure, food security, cutting-edge research, educational opportunities, regional development, and security.

Ultimately, all member states benefit from the added value created by the EU, making the concept of ‘net contributors’ obsolete.

Easing the pressure on national contributions is a legitimate objective, and it has a clear solution: an EU revenue reform. 

The European Parliament supports the basket approach of the European Commission on new own resources and its proposals. It also proposed three additional options capable of generating substantial revenue by 1 January 2028: a digital service levy on major platforms (€25.2bn per year), a levy on online gambling (€3.9bn per year) and a crypto-assets-based own resource (€3bn per year).

Our position is clear: large global companies that benefit most from Europe’s single market should contribute fairly to the EU budget that makes those benefits possible.

Cutting the EU budget may look like saving money. But if it means weaker competitiveness, less social investment and a less secure Europe, we save nothing and taxpayers foot the bill.

The European Union’s common budget has not grown in real terms for 40 years. On the contrary, its purchasing power has been steadily eroded due to high inflation. The current EU budget has lost around 10 percent of its purchasing power compared to when it was adopted in 2020. 

A more ambitious EU budget does not automatically mean that member states will have to contribute substantially more from their national budgets. When amounts are compared in constant prices and as a share of the size of the European economy – like with like – a more realistic picture emerges. 

In terms of spending capacity, and without counting repayment of the Covid-19 recovery fund (NextGenerationEU), the commission’s proposal for the 2028-2034 budget would be below the relative size of the current 2021-2027 MFF at the time of its adoption.

Even with parliament’s proposed increase for key EU programmes, member states’ contributions would still not substantially increase. 

Let us not forget: Europeans benefit considerably more than their countries’ headline contributions suggest. The single market is the clearest example. By removing barriers between 27 economies, it creates opportunities and delivers growth that no country could generate alone. 

By reducing the budget, the EU and its member states will have less capacity to deliver the economic and social benefits that citizens expect. We’ll have less cohesion, less competitiveness, a weaker agricultural sector, less global influence, reduced social investment and a much less secure Europe. And this also comes at a cost. A big one.

Instead of “what can we cut” we should be asking ourselves, “how can we finance a budget that delivers more for all”.  

If we genuinely want to use limited public resources efficiently, we must invest together. Economies of scale work for successful businesses, and they work for Europe.

Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania) and Carla Tavares (S&D, Portugal) are the parliament’s co-rapporteurs on the EU budget, also known as the multiannual financial framework (MFF)

Europe’s Green party has called on the European Commission to exercise the powers it previously used during the Ukraine war to tax the exceptional profits made by big oil and gas companies during the ongoing conflict in Iran. 

“There are models in Europe that we can use to tax these super profits,” German MEP Rasmus Andresen told a European Parliament debate in Strasbourg on Wednesday (7 October), in his call to crack down on Iran-crisis profiteering.

The Strasbourg debate came after Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain wrote to Ireland’s finance minister in August calling for an EU-wide framework to tax windfall profits.

Ireland holds the rotating EU presidency and can set agendas in the EU Council until the end of the year.

Several of those in the group of six EU states already put in place energy windfall taxes since this summer, ranging from 60 percent levies on excess fuel profits in Poland to 33 percent in Portugal.

Many other EU countries oppose introducing another tax at European level, which would require unanimity among all 27 member states to put in place.

But for his part, the Greens’ Andresen told MEPs in the hemicycle on Wednesday: “I don’t understand how despite the fact that there is this initiative from these six member states, that the commission is not taking action.”

Estimates from NGO Transport and Environment found that excess profits of €7.5bn were seen by eight oil companies alone in the first half of 2026 in Europe.

The figures were twice what they had made in the previous quarter. 

The EU had reacted to soaring energy prices after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with a special “solidarity” tax on oil and gas firms, said groups on the Parliament’s left.

A commission assessment found that the measure raised €28bn in 2022-2023.

A senior official representing the Irish presidency, Thomas Byrne, said on Wednesday that windfall taxes “could be considered to respond to the concern related to the rising cost of living“.

But energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen poured cold water on appeals for EU-level action, saying “corporate taxation falls mainly in the realm of national competence” in legal terms.

Andresen’s fellow Green MEP, Marie Toussaint, said taxing Iran profits could be used “to pay for the energy transformation” in Europe, in the context of difficult talks on the EU’s next multi-annual European budget.

If they were not taxed, “how can they be exonerated from all responsibility in the rise of prices at the gas station?,” said the French vice-president of the Greens group.

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European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has joined MEPs in urging the bloc’s governments not to gut the EU’s next seven-year budget, as talks on spending reach a critical phase. 

“I would like to caution against large cuts. It would risk cutting deep into critical priorities that we all together have agreed on,” von der Leyen told MEPs during a speech in Strasbourg on Tuesday (6 October), ahead of an EU summit on 15 October.

The commission has proposed a budget worth just under €2 trillion, equivalent to 1.26 percent of the EU’s gross national income, a small increase on the previous seven year spending plan. But the so-called ‘frugal’ group of countries, led by Germany, have demanded hefty cuts, complaining that they are contributing too much. 

“Having no new financial framework is by far the most financially advantageous solution for Germany,” chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday. 

But 17 EU countries from Southern and Eastern Europe signed a joint letter last week, demanding that farmers’ subsidies via the Common Agricultural Policy are maintained, as well as spending across the EU’s poorest regions, known as cohesion policy 

During a press conference on Tuesday, Siegfried Muresan, the Romanian centre-right MEP who is co-leading parliament’s negotiating team on the seven-year budget with Portuguese socialist and democrat Claudia Tavares, said that there was “still time” for the Irish presidency to avoid proposing “unjustified cuts” that “would make Europe weaker and severely undermine the institutional cooperation between parliament and council.” 

Though Muresan conceded that governments did not want to increase their national contributions, “there is a way out”, he said. 

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MEPs are pushing for an EU solidarity mechanism to help patients pay for treatment abroad, arguing that financial barriers are preventing Europeans from exercising rights they have had on paper for more than a decade.

The calls came as Parliament discussed a report commissioned to inform its own-initiative report on modernising patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare. The study found that cross-border care accounts for just 0.004% of EU public health expenditure, despite patients continuing to face upfront costs, complex reimbursement procedures and prior-authorisation requirements.

Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia) called the proposed solidarity mechanism a potential “game changer” for vulnerable patients, but challenged Parliament to spell out how it would work.

“How would it work in practice? How would it be financed? Would this be part of the EU budget?” Sokol asked. “We need to know it now, so that we can also use this in negotiations on the future EU budget, in the next MFF.”