The EU budget ‘victory’ cheers go on in the Commons, but the facts seem to have been lost in the Prime Minister’s ‘triumph’. What the cheering Tories can’t quite grasp is that all that came out of the European Council last week was an agreed position to make cuts in the EU’s long term budget. That’s all, an ‘agreed position’. It was not a deal. Under the Lisbon Treaty, there is no deal until the European Parliament agrees to one: and the Parliament is in no mood to agree any cuts in EU spending.
And if the Council and the Parliament cannot reach an agreement? The Parliament would be delighted. EU spending would stay at the 2013 ceiling of well over a trillion euros, tens of billions above last week’s agreed position of €960 billion.
So to anyone watching from Brussels, Cameron’s victory celebrations look very odd.
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