EU leaders agree first ever budget cut
David Cameron says the British public “can be proud” after he and other European leaders reach a deal on the EU budget.
The agreement marks the first time there has ever been a reduction in the size of the EU budget and represents a victory for the prime minister, who entered the negotiations saying he was ideally looking for a cut, but would accept a freeze.
He was under pressure from Conservative Eurosceptics to take a tough line in the negotiations in Brussels. In October, he lost a Commons vote on the issue.
But after his speech in January pledging a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, it was unclear before the summit if he would win the backing of other member states in the budget talks.
Veto
Failure to have done so could have led to Britain using its veto for the second time in Mr Cameron’s premiership.
The prime minister was helped on his way by other northern European countres, including Germany.
Cameron: threat to leave Europe helped. Read Gary Gibbon's blog
EU spending from 2014-20 has been pegged at £773bn, about 1 per cent of the union’s total output.
Mr Cameron said: “I think the British public can be proud that we have cut the seven-year credit card limit for the European Union for the first time ever.”
Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said: “It seemed at times that David Cameron was ready to throw in the towel and aim for a freeze, but today’s deal proves that a cut was worth voting for in Westminster and worth negotiating for in Brussels.”
‘Deal done!’
Summit chairman Herman Van Rompuy used Twitter to announce that an agreement had been reached.
“Deal done! European Council has agreed on MFF (Multi-annual Financial Framework) for the rest of the decade. Worth waiting for,” he tweeted.
But Jose Manuel Barroso, chairman of the European Commission, said he would have preferred a bigger settlement, while French President Francois Hollande said: “Is this your dream budget? I would say if I were alone, no, it would have been different.”
Mr Cameron said: “People do understand that the major problem we had was that the credit card limit for the European Union has been too high, it’s always been pushed up, there are lots of people who wanted to put it up and at last someone has come along and said this has got to stop, it is time for that credit card limit to come down.”
The deal still has to be agreed by the European parliament.