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发表于 2010-11-13 18:23
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on viviannew
Something has never changed it seems. The fabled EU gravy train, those fancy cars, long lunches, chocolate and beer-filled Brussels'
lifestyle, all of it - a permanent source of indignation and anger to Euro skeptics.
In times of plenty when European economies were booming, no one cut back on the EU budget. Now, in times of austerity, one might expect/ a different approach. But in fact, David Cameron's last ditch - rearguard action - is an attempt to enforce not a cut, not a freeze, but just a lower increase in the budget than is likely to be approved.
"At a time when European countries, including the United Kingdom, are taking tough decisions on their budgets and having to cut some departments, it's completely wrong that European institutions should be spending more money on themselves in the way they proposed. Six percent is not acceptable, I want to build alliances, work with colleagues, put a stop to that and see if we can do something better. And that's what I'm going to do to today."
The European Commission and, indeed, the European Parliament want to see a rise in the EU budgets of six percent that would represent an increased British contribution of 900 million pounds. Well, David Cameron is pretty much resigned to accept an increase of 2.9 percent. But even that, it's 500 million pounds more - not the sort of thing/ that's going to make British government departments happy when they are facing a cut/ of 19 percent on average over the coming four years.
"It did seem extraordinary that, at the very moment, that George Osborne, was on its feet in the House of Commons, announcing the most significant budget retrenchment since the 1920s to deal with the deficit. But at that moment, MEPs were calling for these huge increases to pay for, among other things, more staff for themselves and higher entertainment budgets for European Commissioners."
The problem for David Cameron is that the budget isn't even on the formal agenda for the summit and / other European leaders are intensely preoccupied by controversial plans to impose strict new fiscal rules on the Euro zone.
The rules have been drawn up to insure no other country should get into the sort of trouble Greece has, provoking riots internally and a bailout from its European neighbors. This is an argument where Britain is on the sidelines and wants it to stay that way, but the wrangling is so intense that it may be hard for the British Prime Minister to draw the argument back to what he thinks are more important these years. |
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