"Merkeron" instead of "Merkozi"?

The summit of the European Union, dedicated to the coordination of the union budget for the next seven years, ended in nothing. The heads of state and government, who had been in Brussels since Thursday evening, departed on Friday evening without reaching an agreement.

The summit of the European Union, dedicated to the coordination of the union budget for the next seven years, ended in nothing. The heads of state and government, who had been in Brussels since Thursday evening, departed on Friday evening without reaching an agreement.

But one important outcome of the summit is clear. Great Britain, the enfant terrible of united Europe, has broken through the ring of isolation. Prime Minister David Cameron, who strongly demanded a radical cut in the Union budget, attracted to his side a whole group of European leaders, including, as he himself listed at a meeting with the press, the heads of Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who clearly does not want Britain isolated in the EU, has shown "sympathy" for Cameron's position, diplomats said. From Friday night, instead of the usual German-French axis, expressed in the nickname "Mercozy", the German-British one, which the journalists immediately dubbed "Merkeron" or "Camerkel", clearly appeared.

The Union budget of the EU is not that big. This is about one trillion euros (one percent of the total GDP of the member countries). The budget is intended, in addition to the maintenance of the EU bureaucracy, for all-Union projects and programs. Among them are subsidies to agriculture (“Common Agricultural Policy”), eating up most of the budget, pulling up the least developed regions and industries to the average level, all-Union infrastructure projects, and assistance to underdeveloped countries.

The distribution of the budget pie is always a delicate matter, but in the context of an economic, financial, debt crisis, it turns into a drama. The contradiction is not only between net donors and net beneficiaries of the budget. There are other dividing lines as well.

Opponents of the big budget insist on a significant cut in the construction of pan-European links in the infrastructure of transport, energy and the Internet, as well as on the reduction of the EU apparatus.

Paris is keen to prevent a major reduction in the article on the Common Agricultural Policy, which, although reduced in recent decades, remains the largest. France is the main recipient of subsidies, along with Italy and Spain.

The President of the European Commission, the Executive Board of the EU, José Manuel Barroso, has requested an appropriation for the 2014-2020 Union Framework Budget. 1.047 billion euros. The head of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, knowing the reaction of Great Britain and other opponents of the expansion of the European "common fund", and even in times of crisis, cut the application for 75 billion, in particular, at the expense of the same Common Agricultural Policy and equalization funds intended for the poorest members EU. But that hasn't helped yet either.