EU funding crisis as Britain leads a walkout on talks
EU: Funding Crisis as Talks Collapse
The European Union faces a full-scale funding crisis after talks in Brussels aimed at settling next year’s budget ended in acrimony and walkouts.
MEPs led a walk-out of three-way talks in which the European Commission and European Parliament were attempting to secure billions of pounds in extra funding for this year and next year from national governments, claiming there was a cash shortfall.
MEPs quit the talks at the attempt to secure a total of £13.8 billion in spending this year and next, a move fiercely opposed by the British Government.
Ministers have formed an alliance with other EU nations including Germany, the Netherlands and France to block the demands.
The failure of the talks casts a fresh doubt on whether a major summit to agree to the EU’s future funding from 2014 to 2020, scheduled for later this month, can go ahead.
There had already been claims that the Brussels gathering would be cancelled because David Cameron was refusing to drop his threat of using Britain’s veto to block any future increase above the level of inflation for the seven-year period.