Northern European countries are set to gather in Vienna today, at a secretly scheduled meeting, aiming to forge a joint front in view of the two -year “battle” expected for the next seven -year budget of the European Union.

It is the first time that leading officials from the richest EU countries – such as France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries – will be in the same room to score a common strategy on the controversial budget plan of the European Commission of 1,816 trillion. euro, as Politico reports.

Their aim is to recommend a common bloc against countries such as Poland, Spain and Italy, which are in favor of increasing spending, especially agriculture, and funding the poorer areas of the Union.

Since July 16, when the new seven -year budget was announced, officials from the bloc countries had enough time to flip through the proposal of hundreds of pages and start calculations on how much money they would earn and how much they will lose on the new cost of spending.

EU officials’ official negotiations on the budget have just begun, but in the background, countries with similar rationale are already devising plans. At the Vienna meeting there will be no ministers – they will discuss the budget in October at a meeting organized at European level.

In any budget negotiation, countries with similar interests are interested in developing common lines of attack, organizing joint meetings with the Commission and distributing duties, such as testing types to distribute costs.

Their ultimate goal is to score a better strategy than the opponent camp to win the negotiations battle and to align the EU mammoth budget more with their priorities.

“It’s normal,” Political MEP Yanni Levadovsky, who served as EU budget commissioner from 2010 to 2014, told Politico.

Power in the union

Instead of acting individually, the 27 EU countries come together in two camps.

One is composed by the wealthy “purely contributing” countries – from Sweden to France – which contribute more than they receive from the EU budget and generally in favor of a more sparkling fund.

The opponent camp, also known as cohesion friends, is a wide alliance of southern and eastern European countries, such as Italy, Spain and Poland, in favor of a larger budget – especially with regard to “cohesion funds” supporting the poorest countries.

“As so many in the world, the multiannual fiscal framework
(MFF, EU long -term budget) is not defined by the economy but by history, “said Austrian Finance Ministry Secretary General Stefan Imhov during an event earlier this month.

But there are obvious differences even in each camp. For example, France and the Netherlands, both of which, both of them, have completely different agendas on issues such as the common debt, with Paris in favor and the Hague against.

On the issue of agricultural subsidies, France is more aligned with Poland than with countries in its own camp.

However, countries are trying to resolve the differences within their camp, resulting in key positions, such as the overall budget.

The meeting of the richest countries of Block in Vienna today will take place under the leadership of the two “powerful” EU.

“In the end, France and Germany agree on an amount and we as puppies follow,” he said of a diplomat of one of the other purely contributing EU countries who knows well how these negotiations evolve, and who agreed to speak to Politico, as well as not being named.

In the opponent camp, Poland usually takes a leading role, as it is the country that receives the most funds from the EU budget.

However, its long -term close relationship with Hungary – with which it has common interests – has been undermined because of the rupture with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, whose democratic regression has forced the committee to withhold billions of euros.

This development has paved the way in the Mediterranean countries – which are also in favor of a more generous funding of poorer countries – to play a more active, coordinating role in the benefit camp.

On September 1, Malta presided over a meeting of experts on the budget of cohesion friends, which laid the foundations for the first technical meeting of the 27 countries of the Union held the following day.

Negotiators experienced budgets point out that critical decisions are made in these loose meetings. Last March, purely contributing countries agreed to allocate 175 billion euros for the Horizon research program – which was confirmed by the Commission a little later – during an informal meeting in Helsinki, according to a European diplomat.

What will the Commission do

The European Commission, for its part, will seek backstage to put pressure on the governments of the member states to support its original proposal during negotiations with the European Council and the European Parliament.

In the coming months, Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin – former Ambassador of Poland to the EU and with extensive experience in the European Council – will take on the role of mediator between the two camps: pure contributors and cohesion friends.

There he will be able to see the “papers” on each side, according to a Commission official.

Levantovsky’s experienced budget negotiator said the commissioner would follow the tactic of “dividing and reigning” rather than the integration of the two camps into the European Council.

Levadovsky’s advice to Serafin, who was his assistant when he was a commissioner, is to “approach countries one by one … instead of dealing with two big fronts” as he will weaken them.

As harsh controversy are expected, few things are data for negotiators.

“The proposal (of the committee) will not be what will be agreed in the end, everyone will have to make concessions … (but) we always reach an agreement, and we will do so this time,” Austrian Imhov said.