'We have elections more or less every month': Costa wants Europe's €2 trillion budget, and its new EU taxes, signed before France and Italy vote

There is a particular kind of politician who, when told that voters in several of the largest countries in Europe are about to go to the polls, concludes that the sensible thing is to finish the deal before they do.

Meet António Costa, President of the European Council. On the idea that leaders should wait for next year's elections in countries including France, Italy and Poland before agreeing the EU's next seven-year budget, he was refreshingly frank in an interview with Rapporteur. "We have elections more or less every month," he said. "If you are waiting to conclude all the elections, then we won't have a new budget neither in December nor in June. Never. Because we always have elections."

He has a point about the calendar. He is missing the point about democracy.

What is on the table

The sums are not small. In July 2025 the Commission proposed a long-term budget for 2028 to 2034 of almost €2 trillion, about 1.26% of the EU's gross national income, according to its own figures. To help pay for it, it proposed five new "own resources", which is Brussels for money that flows to the EU without passing through a national budget vote each year: a share of carbon-market and carbon-border revenues, a levy on uncollected electronic waste, a slice of tobacco excise, and a new charge on large companies' turnover.

Costa now wants to go further. He told Rapporteur he would work with "all the five proposals presented by the Commission, with the three proposals presented by the European Parliament, and some proposals presented by different member states". The menu reportedly includes a digital levy on big tech firms, many of them American, and possible "sin taxes" on sugar and gambling.

He will put his compromise, with figures, on the table ahead of a special summit on 26 and 27 November, Agence Europe reports. "The basic budget should be agreed in November, and it's possible to agree in November," he said.

Everybody wants more, nobody wants to pay

Meanwhile, the rest of Brussels is doing what it always does in budget season: asking for more.

On Thursday, 22 October, MEPs voted by a huge majority to seek about €47.4 billion for the Erasmus+ exchange programme over the seven years, around €7 billion more than the Commission proposed, the Parliament announced. EUobserver's headline summed up the mood: the Parliament "defies frugal capitals". Farm MEPs in the centre-right EPP, the Parliament's largest group, have threatened to block the overhaul of the budget unless farmers get binding guarantees, Rapporteur reported. Other MEPs want regional money spent on affordable housing.

Every one of those causes has its defenders. Students like Erasmus. Farmers have been squeezed. Housing is a crisis. But the logic of the EU budget is always the same: each lobby fights for its slice, and the size of the cake is treated as somebody else's problem.

The somebody else is the national treasuries. According to Agence Europe, Paris, Berlin and Rome are already seeking to cut their contributions to next year's annual EU budget. France has made new EU taxes a condition for a deal, Rapporteur reports, while Sweden doubts their merits, arguing they would just put more strain on national budgets.

Why new EU taxes matter more than the headline number

Here is the part that deserves more attention than it gets. A higher national contribution is visible. It appears in a finance minister's budget, it gets debated in a national parliament, and voters can punish it. A new EU own resource is designed to be the opposite. Once agreed, the money arrives in Brussels more or less automatically, year after year, without a national vote every autumn.

That is precisely why the Commission likes them, and precisely why a centre-right voter should be wary. Taxation and representation have been joined at the hip for centuries. An EU revenue stream drawn from a digital levy or a tax on gambling is still paid by Europeans, in the end. It simply reaches Brussels by a route on which they get fewer chances to object.

And because own resources require unanimity and national ratification, they are almost impossible to undo. A budget is for seven years. A new tax is for ever.

The case for waiting

Costa's argument, to be fair, is not only about elections. He also points to the administrative work needed to get the new budget running by January 2028. And he notes, correctly, that the last round, in 2020, ended in a summit that lasted five days and four nights.

But consider what he is actually proposing. A Portuguese former prime minister, chosen by governments rather than voters, wants to lock in a seven-year, roughly €2 trillion spending plan, possibly with new EU-level taxes, months before electorates in France and Italy, two of the three biggest economies in the euro area, give their verdict on the people who will sign it. At the last summit, Italy, Sweden and Hungary pushed to remove a pre-Christmas deadline from the draft conclusions, Rapporteur reported. They were not wrong to.

"I don't see any reason to believe that in January or February, it would be easier than in December," Costa said. Easier is not the test. Legitimate is.

If the budget is sound, it will survive a few months and a few elections. If it can only pass by being rushed through before voters speak, that tells you everything you need to know about it.