No less important, to reach consensus, the EU ended up with a smaller post-Brexit European budget, and one that eliminates or reduces spending for some ambitious projects designed to prepare Europe for the future, such as research and climate transition, a fund to promote consensus on the 2030 carbon targets that was reduced by a third.
Even with the virus, a proposed health fund completely evaporated. There were also reductions in the Commission’s proposals in other areas of investment, foreign policy and defense.
Ms. Von der Leyen called it “a difficult point” and said that such cuts, made in the search for a compromise, are “regrettable, the innovative part of the budget decreases.”
“It was about giving and receiving, so the victims appear to have been the EU’s public goods, delivering added value to all,” said Jean Pisani-Ferry, a French economist, in a Twitter message. “The price of the deal seems high.”
“This is not frugal. This is stupid, ” said Henrik Enderlein, a German economist who heads the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, in a Twitter response. But he also applauded the broader deal and the recovery fund. “We should not be frugal in our judgment,” he said. “This is historical.”
As Mr Enderlein pointed out, the summit must be seen as a breakthrough at a time of crisis when the European Union, now without Britain, cannot be seen as a failure. European fights over money and budgets are never pretty. But Merkel more than most understands that, despite all the talk of European solidarity, the European Union only proceeds when its various leaders can convince their voters that they have fought the good fight for national interests.
As Janis Emmanouilidis, Director of Studies at the Center for European Policy, commented:
“The price of any deal would have been much higher, potentially incalculable both economically and politically at the EU and national level.”
