Talks on the EU's next long-term budget have reached an impasse, with heads of government expressing open doubts about whether a deal can be concluded before the end of the calendar year — and any further delay would push the rollout into a period of the bloc's schedule already crowded with national votes. Prior to this point, member states had pledged to conclude a binding deal no later than December 2026.
At the Brussels gathering on Thursday — where deliberations extended well past their scheduled close — a growing share of member governments expressed doubt about whether such a step is achievable, with one delegate stating that an agreement within the current month was not within reach. The timing falls outside the coming month.
Ulf Kristersson, serving as Sweden's caretaker prime minister, expressed doubt that any deal could be reached before the year's end, adding that he did not view the timeline as pressing. That position stands at odds with the stance António Costa, president of the European Council, has maintained over recent months — namely that member state leaders must reach a unanimous decision on the next seven-year budget, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework, no later than December. Costa has indicated that negotiations running past the end of 2026 would leave too little time for the legislative process required to have the budget operational by 1 January 2028.
With the summit having ended without agreement — the Irish presidency's proposal to reduce the overall budget by €141 billion having been largely rejected — Costa is set to take charge of the talks, a development that had been widely anticipated. A revised negotiating proposal from the European Council President is expected within the coming weeks, with its underlying approach anticipated to diverge from the framework put forward by Ireland. A gathering of EU leaders has been arranged for 26 November in an extraordinary session.
Among the elements Costa's plan is designed to address: holding member-state contributions at a restrained level, introducing a fresh set of EU-wide revenue instruments to fund the bloc's budget, and preserving a buffer for unanticipated costs — a reserve line that the competing Irish framework had pared back considerably.
Ahead of the summit, negotiating texts had already been quietly revised to remove an explicit target of concluding a deal by year's end, replacing that language with wording indicating that an agreement reached before the close of 2026 would allow legislative measures to be adopted in 2027 — a timeline considered necessary for EU funding to flow to recipients without a break from January 2028 onward. Several heads of government, speaking before the gathering convened, indicated they viewed no hard year-end cutoff as binding on them. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told the Senate on Wednesday that the calendar date should not take precedence over the substance of any deal, and that her government would not accept terms it considered unfavourable simply to satisfy a timetable. Talks over what any workable arrangement would actually entail have yet to produce shared ground, even as the position put forward holds that a deal will only be entered into once the terms suit Italy.
Budget talks at the EU level routinely set member states at odds, as each government looks to draw out more from the collective pot than it puts in. Two opposing blocs have formed at the heart of the negotiations: one grouping, composed of six net-contributor countries under German leadership and sometimes labelled the "frugals," is pressing for a substantial reduction in the overall budget envelope, while a 17-member alliance of southern and eastern nations — known as the Friends of Cohesion — is working to protect long-standing funding arrangements directed at the EU's lower-income regions. Each of those groupings holds a range of internal positions and perspectives.
Certain members of the Cohesion Friends bloc — Spain and Italy among them — hold a direct financial stake in how agricultural funding gets allocated. Nations such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have pushed to raise their military budgets, a position shaped by their shared land border with Russia. Of the nations grouped under the fiscal-restraint bloc, Germany and Sweden are regarded as holding the most stringent positions, whereas Finland's focus centres on agricultural funding.
France holds the position of the eurozone's second-largest economy, yet its policy path remains unsettled, with European integration commitments on one side and a budget deficit that has expanded well past earlier projections on the other. Both Belgium and Luxembourg appear to occupy an uncertain middle ground between the two camps, with officials from those countries noting that what matters most, ultimately, is arriving at a workable Multiannual Financial Framework.
Speed in reaching a deal is a priority that draws interest from nearly every quarter. Rob Jetten's stated priority was landing a deal with real substance rather than settling for terms that would not hold up to scrutiny. Agreements on contentious matters tend to materialise only when deadlines loom, given that neither party typically feels sufficient pressure to yield ground before the final hours. Declining to express commitment to any particular timeline can function as a bargaining position — a way of holding firm without conceding ground.
Looming on the 2027 calendar for seven nations — France, Italy, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Slovakia, and Greece — those national votes sit alongside delays in funding programmes as twin points of concern for EU officials. Without an agreement in place before the year closes, the timeline could shift to autumn 2027, according to some analysts.
Polling figures place Marine Le Pen near the front of the field ahead of the French presidential vote, with her platform calling for the country's annual EU budget contribution to be brought down from roughly €8 billion to a ceiling of €5 billion. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides indicated that upcoming balloting in Spain — scheduled for 29 November — along with Sweden's September vote stood to generate certain complications. Christodoulides pressed once more for a year-end deadline for striking a deal, with his voice standing as one of the few among EU leaders still taking that position.
