UE multi-annual budget ‘not a good sign’ – Carlos Moedas

  • Lusa
  • 17 February 2020

Carlos Moedas, who was at the European Commission between 2014 and 2019, has said that the European Council's new proposal for the European Union's multiannual budget is "not a good sign."

The former European Commissioner for Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas has said that the European Council’s new proposal for the European Union’s multiannual budget (2021-2027) is “not a good sign for Europe”, he said in an interview with Lusa.

Carlos Moedas, who was at the European Commission between 2014 and 2019, compares the proposal, which foresees national contributions of 1.074% of Gross National Income (GNI), with the federal budget of the United States, to stress the incompatibility of the figures under discussion with the EU’s ambitions.

“The US federal state budget is 20% of US GDP, the EU federal ‘budget’ is 1%, so the difference is 1 to 20,” he says.

“It’s very little for Europe, especially if we want to have more ambition in the area of defence, I don’t see how we are going to achieve it if we are going to continue to have ambition in the area of science, […] if we continue to have the drama that has been the refugees, [I don’t know] how it is going to be”, he explained, stressing that these kind of values “are not auspicious of a good future.”

The former commissioner, who launched the book “Southerly Winds, Portugal and Europe” in Lisbon this week, says he hopes that by next Thursday’s extraordinary European Council “things will be better.”

“This is a whole process, […] it’s negotiations, so what appears on the table today will not be the conclusions,” he said, although he stressed that the discussion at Council level, made up of the leaders of the 27 member states, “is very difficult because the countries each want their own thing and those who receive don’t want to receive one less euro and those who give don’t want to pay one more euro.”

Asked about the warnings of the European Parliament, which not only presented a more ambitious proposal of 1.3%, but has to approve the budget that comes out of the Council, Carlos Moedas said that “this is the role of Parliament”: “You realise that all these policies that we want to do are not possible with this budget alone.”

“I think that at the end of the day there will be, there must be, agreement. It does not matter to anyone that there is no agreement’, he added.

Among the areas financed by the multiannual framework is science and innovation, which he has tutored, and which he hopes will be endowed with the planned figures.

“I had the pleasure of having agreed with Parliament and with the countries, before I left, the creation of a European Innovation Council […], with funding of more than €10 billion just for this transposition, translation, from science to innovation,” he explains.

It aims to support the implementation of scientific knowledge, an area where “Europe remains strong”, for the making innovative products.

“This I have agreed to, in fact, I have left almost everything in the Future of Innovation and Science programme agreed between Parliament, the Commission and the countries, except for the number, we just can’t be sure that it will be €100 billion”, he said, stressing however that he is “very hopeful that it will be” because “everyone in Europe agrees” on the need to increase the budget for innovation and science.”