Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden want to cut the EU’s proposed long-term budget for 2027–2034, but have yet to agree on how much.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted the leaders of Finland, Austria and Denmark for a lunch meeting in Berlin on Thursday to discuss cuts to the EU’s next seven-year budget. The prime ministers of the Netherlands and Sweden joined by video conference.
The meeting of the so-called “frugals” — vocal net contributors to the EU budget — was intended to reaffirm their shared demand to reduce the budget’s overall size. But they again failed to agree on a figure.
“We will continue to handle this in the same way as a group. We agreed on this today because we share a common interest in advocating for realism and reforms in these negotiations,” Merz said at a subsequent press conference.
“We finance around 40% of the European budget. This means that we are, so to speak, the group of major contributors to the European budget,” he added.
