European Parliament outlines its post-Brexit vision

The draft resolution from the Parliament says non-EU members cannot receive the same benefits or market access.

A “deep and comprehensive” trade deal of the kind the U.K. says it wants with the EU would require Britain to accept a “binding convergence mechanism” with EU laws, according to a draft resolution from the European Parliament obtained by POLITICO.

The uncompromising 13-page document — titled “Motion for a resolution to wind up the debate on the framework of the future EU-UK relationship” — is a statement of the Parliament’s priorities for the U.K.’s exit as set out by the Brexit Steering Group led by Guy Verhofstadt.

It proposes an “association agreement” between the EU and the U.K., and makes clear that the EU has “binding common rules, common institutions and common supervisory, enforcement and adjudicatory mechanisms,” which mean that even closely aligned non-EU countries cannot “enjoy similar benefits or market access.”

The Parliament does not have a formal role in the Brexit negotiations but it will have a binding vote on the eventual deal. The draft resolution — the fourth issued by the Parliament on Brexit — is designed to put pressure on the EU and U.K. to take heed of MEPs’ wishes.

Many of the 65 clauses in the document, which is a draft and therefore subject to change, read as a direct rebuttal of the vision of Brexit that U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May set out in her Mansion House speech last week.

She is pushing for an ambitious trade deal that includes financial services and allows the U.K. to remain closely aligned to the EU in some areas of the single market but not others.

By contrast, the European Parliament text states that:

— “A third country [cannot] have the same benefits as a Member State of the European Union, or an EFTA/EEA Member.”

— A “deep and comprehensive” trade deal must entail “a binding interpretation role” for the European Court of Justice and “does not allow cherry-picking of sectors of the internal market.”

— One priority is that a “level playing field is ensured and EU standards are safeguarded and a race to the bottom avoided,” and that maintaining a level playing field means abiding by the EU’s competition and state aid rules.

— “Limitations in the cross-border provisions of financial services are a customary feature of [free-trade agreements].”

— “Taxation matters should be integrated in any further agreement between UK and the EU to ensure a maximum level of cooperation between the EU and the UK and its dependent territories in the field of corporate taxation.”

The text will be issued on Wednesday, before the Council of the EU publishes its own guidelines for negotiations on the U.K.’s future relationship with the bloc.

The document insists that “continued membership of the United Kingdom in the Internal Market and the Customs Union” is the Parliament’s preferred option — something the U.K. government has ruled out.

On the issue of the Northern Irish border, which remains a major stumbling block, the Parliament text says it welcomed the recent proposals in the European Commission’s draft Withdrawal Agreement, “which makes the backstop option outlined in the Joint Report of the 8th of December 2017 operational.”

According to that Commission document, in the absence of an alternative solution, Northern Ireland should remain part of the EU customs union and maintain full regulatory alignment — effectively imposing a new trade boundary in the Irish Sea. The proposal was rejected by London and Belfast, with May stating that no U.K. prime minister could agree to it.

On the issues of “internal security” and “foreign policy, security cooperation and development cooperation” the Parliament document strikes a more emollient tone. It makes clear that the U.K. can still participate in “civilian and military EU missions,” although with no lead role. And it states that, “it is in the mutual interest of the EU and the U.K. to establish a partnership that ensures continued security cooperation to face shared threats, especially terrorism and organised crime.”

Verhofstadt met with May, David Davis and other ministers in London Tuesday. He expressed optimism that an agreement on citizens’ rights could be reached soon.

Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” actor Jeff Daniels said if President Donald Trump wins in 2020, it will be “the end of democracy.”

Daniels said, “I think there are people in the Midwest, between the coasts, who don’t know anything about this, who don’t care about this, they don’t have time for this, who have to make a decision now. You have to decide whether, like Atticus, you believe there is still compassion, decency, civility, respect for others, do unto others — remember that? Do unto others. All that stuff you guys believe in, and you still voted not for Hillary, or for Trump, where are you now? Because your kids are looking up at you going, ‘but he lies.’ And I think there are a lot of people in the Midwest who are going—it might be enough for them. We’re going to find out if the big gamble is to go all the way to November 2020, which I agree, and lose, it’s the end of democracy.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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LONDON — Forget speaking the same language, neither side in the Brexit talks any longer believes what the other is saying.

Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, traveled to London Monday asking for clarity about the U.K.’s objectives, but left disappointed with a departing warning shot for Theresa May that time is running out for her to decide what Britain wants.

“Time has come to make [a] choice,” he said.

The day before the next phase of negotiations was due to start, the gap between the two sides exposed just how much must be resolved in the remaining 14 months before the U.K. leaves the European Union, despite agreement in December to move onto the second phase of talks.

In Brussels, EU officials told POLITICO before the meeting they do not believe the British prime minister will stick to her red line of Britain leaving the customs union.

Having folded on the Brexit bill in Phase 1, Brussels believes it is only a matter of time before May backs down again. To honor its commitment to an invisible border in Ireland, Brussels believes the U.K. will have to give way on customs.

But, if Brussels does not believe London, the feeling is mutual.

According to a senior U.K. government figure familiar with Monday’s tête-à-tête, Barnier was left in no doubt about the government’s determination to leave the customs union and seek a new arrangement that allows London to strike independent free-trade deals — including goods and services — after Brexit.

“The simple truth is we haven’t left any doubt,” the U.K. government figure said.

A message willfully lost in translation? “Yes,” said the insider.

Over the three hours the two sat down together, Barnier did not bring up the customs union, according to one insider familiar with the talks, but Davis made the position clear in his statement after the talks — saying the U.K. would be out of the customs union and single market “in the longer term.”

To the EU27 this is a demand for a cherry-picked special deal that is not on the table. It calculates the U.K. won’t risk leaving the EU without agreeing a withdrawal treaty that provides an orderly exit, including a transition period needed to prevent what many fear would be a potentially major shock to the British economy.

But things look different from London. One senior U.K. official said Brussels was simply playing a game, ramping up pressure on Britain to change its position despite clear indications from the U.K. that this was not an option.

Spirit of haste

Monday’s exchange exposed the depth of division that still exists between the two sides as they gear up for a crucial period in the divorce talks. London and Brussels hope to reach a transition agreement in March before starting formal negotiations on the final exit package, planned to conclude by October, including a political statement on the outline of a future trade, foreign policy, defense and security relationship. 

Talks on the transition deal begin on Tuesday and a key U.K. Cabinet sub-committee meeting Wednesday and Thursday will begin to thrash out what Britain’s negotiating position will be on a final deal.

It was on Barnier’s previous sojourn to London last April, when he dined with May and Davis, alongside Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his head of Cabinet Martin Selmayr, that the gulf between London and Brussels’ expectations became acutely apparent. Less than a month after May triggered Article 50, it led to officials briefing May was in “different galaxy” when it came to Brexit.

The two sides have moved closer to an accord since — reaching a holding agreement on withdrawal issues in December — and the atmosphere on Monday was cordial. May joined Barnier and Davis for a pre-lunch (non-alcoholic) drink in No. 10 Downing Street’s Terracotta Room.

Her official spokesman said she and Barnier discussed their shared pleasure at reaching December’s “joint report” agreement, and May thanked the EU’s chief negotiator for his role getting the talks over the line. They also agreed “it was in the interests of both sides to move quickly on the implementation period and to agree a positive future relationship,” the spokesman said.

In that spirit of haste, Commission officials are expected, as early as Tuesday, to adopt the draft text of a chapter of the withdrawal agreement on transition, according to two EU officials. That will truncate the process and allow transition talks to proceed on the basis of discussions of a legal text.

This text will be incorporated into the withdrawal agreement that the U.K. and EU agree on at the end of the negotiations this fall.

May departed after 20 minutes, leaving Barnier and Davis, now familiar sparring partners, to a lunch of British oak-smoked salmon, slow roast pork and vanilla custard tart.

But having heard what the U.K. government’s does not want, Barnier rose from the table apparently none the wiser as to what the U.K. does want.

“We need … clarity about the U.K. proposals for the future partnership,” he told reporters afterward. “The only thing I can say: Without a customs union and outside the single market, barriers to trade in goods and services are unavoidable. [The] time has come to make [a] choice.”

In Brussels, officials have been waiting for months — naively, perhaps — for the U.K. to change its position on leaving the EU customs union, believing that it was only a matter of time before London recognized the clear self-interest in avoiding any reinstatement of trade barriers.

Too vague

It is precisely the issue of staying in the customs union that EU officials and EU27 diplomats refer to when they complain, for instance, that the U.K. has been too vague about its goals for the future relationship.

But while EU negotiators are more than eager to help broker an arrangement that would keep Britain in the customs union, officials in Brussels are also keenly aware there is little they can do to help May with her domestic political problems, and the pressure from pro-Brexit Tories they believe is the main obstacle to a customs deal.

EU officials are reluctant to push her too hard for fear that her government could collapse, even as they grow increasingly anxious with each passing week about not having enough time to complete a withdrawal treaty.

“One of the key aspects of this moment is that May is too weak and nobody here wants to be blamed if things in London go wrong,” said one senior EU diplomat working on Brexit.

At the same time, Brussels’ patience — like the time on the two-year Article 50 clock — is running out fast. While officials are sympathetic to the fact that May has pro-Brexit Tories “on her neck,” they are also adamant about needing a clearer picture of where things are headed before approving a transition deal.

“None from the 27 will engage in a meaningful transition agreement without knowing where we are transitioning to,” one EU official said.

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Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants.

Cher said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and poverty-stricken Americans.

“I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More,” Cher said.

The post came after President Trump threatened to bus border crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like California, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that the White House is considering the plan.

In response, Democrat mayors across the country — like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf — have welcomed bringing illegal aliens and border crossers to their cities.

While left-wing mayors say they will continue to admit any and all illegal and legal immigrants, Los Angeles is home to the second largest homeless population in the country, second to only New York City. About 50,000 residents of Los Angeles are homeless and about 7.5 percent of California’s American Veteran population is homeless.

As the city remains crippled by homelessness and skyrocketing housing costs, Los Angeles metro area is also home to the second largest illegal alien population — with nearly a million illegal aliens living in the region, according to Pew Research Center.

Last year, economists at Deakin University found that immigration — both illegal and legal — drives up housing prices on average, with the researchers writing “we find no evidence that house prices sink as a result of immigration.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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ECJ adviser: Increased logging in Białowieża forest breaches EU law

The court is expected to rule on the case in April.

Poland’s decision to increase logging rates in parts of the protected Białowieża forest “infringes EU law,” European Court of Justice Advocate General Yves Bot said in an opinion published Tuesday.

The opinion comes after the European Commission launched an infringement procedure to stop large-scale logging last July over concerns it would threaten the “integrity” of the protected site.

Białowieża is unique in Europe, bearing traces of the primeval forest that once covered the Continent. It’s a World Heritage Site along with the neighboring Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus and is protected under the EU’s Natura 2000 program.

Warsaw in 2016 authorized a nearly three-fold increase in logging operations in the Białowieża Forest district and also authorized logging in other areas. Poland said logging was necessary to deal with an outbreak of bark beetle infestation and ensure public safety.

The advocate general said Poland’s decision is “liable to result in a deterioration of the breeding sites of the protected species” and proposed that the court “should rule that Poland has failed to fulfill its obligations under” the EU’s Habitats and Birds Directives.

The court tends to follow its advisers’ opinions. The court is expected to rule in April.

The ECJ last year also issued an injunction barring any further logging until the case is decided. The court warned Warsaw in late November that it faced a daily penalty of at least €100,000 if it failed to stop logging immediately.

Warsaw has since said that it is observing the ban.

Poland’s Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk said Poland “as a rule of law state, respects the advocate general’s opinion” and would analyze it “thoroughly.”

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Actress Patricia Heaton ripped MSNBC for their “loathsome” harassment of FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller as he left Church on Easter Sunday, pointing out that their ambush occurred in the backdrop of Christians in Sri Lanka being brutally murdered as they worshiped.

On Sunday, MSNBC filmed their reporter Mike Viqueira ambushing Mueller outside a Church in Washington D.C., asking questions about President Donald Trump and the implications of his special counsel report into supposed Russian collusion during the election. As Mueller tried to enter his vehicle, he simply replied, “No comment.”

The exchange drew anger from many on social media, including Patricia Heaton, who referenced Sunday’s bombings against Christian worshipers in Colombia, Sri Lanka, at the hands of Islamist terrorists.

“Hello @MSNBC. Today is Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian calendar. Some of the faithful were murdered today while they worshiped,” the Everybody Loves Raymond star said. “But you ambush Robert Mueller outside of his church and chuckle about it afterward. This is loathesome. Shame on you.”

The star of ABC’s The Middle also expressed her anger at the failure of Democratic politicians to describe the victims of Sunday’s attacks as Christians, instead referring to them as “Easter worshippers.”

“It reminds me of the time #Nancy Pelosi couldn’t bring herself to say the name ‘Jesus,’” Patricia Heaton wrote.

Although not overtly political, the 61-year-old makes no secret about her Christian beliefs, which include a pro-life stance. In 2017, she responded angrily to a report detailing how Iceland had exterminated nearly all children with Downs syndrome through abortion.

“Iceland isn’t actually eliminating Down syndrome,” she wrote at the time.  “They’re just killing everybody that has it. Big difference.”

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at [email protected].

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Game of Thrones fans are calling on HBO to remake the show’s final season, circulating a petition that is fast approaching one million signatures. The petition cites the show’s “woefully incompetent” writers, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who they themselves admit to planning on being “very drunk” and “in an undisclosed location” when the final episode airs on Sunday night.

“David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on,” states the petition, “This series deserves a final season that makes sense.”

The petition, entitled, “Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers,” has garnered over 800,000 signatures as of Friday morning.

The popular series — which is an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s best-selling book series, “A Song of Fire and Ice” — had ventured beyond the timeline of the published books by the start of Season 6, leaving the fate of the show’s plot line to writers Benioff and Weiss.

Martin did note, however, that he had advised Benioff and Weiss of the “major points” he envisioned for the series, adding that “there may also be changes” made by the showrunners. Well, according to frustrated fans, those anticipated “changes” seem to be most prevalent in Season 8, which is capped at just six episodes.

The last two Game of Thrones episodes aired thus far have tanked in ratings, according to the review-aggregating website, Rotten Tomatoes, which scores Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks,” at 57 percent, and Episode 5, “The Bells,” at 47 percent. The low ratings have dropped the average score for Season 8 down to 71 percent, with the show’s other seasons scoring at no lower than 91 percent.

“I don’t want these two anywhere near Star Wars, either. This was abysmal,” read the top-liked comment in the petition’s “reasons for signing” section. The comment is in reference to Benioff and Weiss having been recently slated to write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy.

Below are just a few more of the many “reasons for signing” expressed by Game of Thrones fans in the petition.

Benioff and Weiss recently alluded to their concerns regarding backlash from outraged fans, telling Entertainment Weekly that they plan to be “very drunk” and “in an undisclosed location” for the big debut of the Game of Thrones series finale, which will air on Sunday night.

“We’ll be in an undisclosed location, turning off our phones and opening various bottles,” said Weiss, “At some point, if and when it’s safe to come out again, somebody like [HBO’s GoT publicist Mara Mikialian] will give us a breakdown of what was out there without us having to actually experience it.”

“I plan to be very drunk and very far from the internet,” added Benioff.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.

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Europe powers up in battery contest with Asia

As demand for electric cars soars, European carmakers are sourcing most of their batteries from Asia.

Growing numbers of electric cars are being sold around the world, and more than half of the batteries that power them are made in China.

The worry that the EU will lose out in the fast rising industry is prompting Brussels to try and supercharge Europe’s battery sector.

A European Commission initiative called the Battery Alliance, aimed at forging tighter links among carmakers, governments and banks, held its second summit in Brussels on Monday.

EU sales of electric vehicles are set to boom from 126,000 in 2017 to 200,000 this year, according to figures from forecasting agency LMC Automotive. As demand ramps up both for cars and in-home power storage systems, the European battery market could be worth €250 billion by 2025, or a third of the global total, said Maroš Šefčovič, the Commission vice president for the energy union.

A fast-growing industry of that scale is beyond the reach of any single EU country, he said.

Some 51 percent of global battery manufacturing capacity is in China. That rises to 88 percent when South Korea and Japan are included, according to 2014 figures. That ties Europe’s electro-mobility push to technology developed and produced thousands of kilometers away.

The European idea isn’t to replicate a single battery champion in the way Airbus consolidated the aircraft industry. Instead, the plan is to better coordinate existing players, helped by better regulation, lots of government cash and a focus on research and development.

An industry-led action plan is due at the end of this month laying out 20 key priorities needed to forge progress.

“We are in the center of the biggest and deepest change in the automotive industry since its beginning,” Matthias Machnig, state secretary at the German economy ministry, said after the meeting. “We would be naive to think we can handle battery technology as a commodity that can be bought anywhere in the world.”

Rather than buying in bulk from Asia, the EU should develop a vibrant lithium-ion cell production industry that will keep Europe’s automakers competitive, he argued.

Without that, the car industry will gravitate to the cheapest source of production. Auto giants like BMW, Renault and Daimler already outsource cell production to Asia but do the packaging and final assembly themselves in Europe.

“We cannot differentiate ourselves by the cell used, but rather by how efficiently the battery system works,” one German car industry official said. “The situation could be different in the next generation of cell technology, the post-lithium ion technology that is expected to be ready for series production by 2025. However, from our point of view, this is not necessarily a business for a car manufacturer, but for suppliers.”

Sourcing batteries in Europe is going to be enormously expensive.

Volkswagen plans to launch 20 new electric models by 2020 and sell 3 million such vehicles by 2025 as it looks to steer past the Dieselgate scandal. To meet that demand, the carmaker would need a production site six times the size of Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada, VW’s Chief Technical Officer Ulrich Eichhorn said in an interview last year.

“In Germany, energy costs alone would probably rule out a factory, so we’d have to find a solution for that,” said Eichhorn. His company estimates batteries will constitute some 30 to 40 percent of vehicle production costs.

Germany’s Daimler expects to open a facility near Dresden later this year to make its own cells, and the company plans to build battery plants close to its non-European factories as well.

“We put a great emphasis on building [batteries] in our own factories,” said Markus Schäfer, who deals with battery supply on the board of Mercedes-Benz, which wants to have six plants on three continents. “As we are close to our vehicle plants we can ensure the optimal supply of production.”

Despite the scale of the challenge, Monday’s summit resulted in only a trickle of money going to battery production. The European Investment Bank said it had approved a loan of €52.5 million for the construction of a battery plant in northern Sweden by Northvolt — its first investment in the sector.

As Europe works on multipoint action plans, Asian players are already stepping in.

South Korea’s LG Chem started work on its own production facility in the Polish city of Wrocław in 2016. The plant will have the capacity to churn out 100,000 car batteries each year, with the company promising it will be a “mecca of battery production” less than 200 kilometers from the German border.

That puts pressure on European countries to move quickly.

“If we don’t do it now we are out of the game for many, many years,” said Machnig.

Newly-released text messages reveal an aide to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx harshly criticized the Chicago Police Department’s conduct during their investigation into the alleged hate hoax carried by Empire actor Jussie Smollett.

CWB Chicago reports:

As Breitbart News reported, text messages also show Kim Foxx told her top deputy that Smollett was a “washed up celeb” who was overcharged.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases …16 counts on a class 4 (felony) becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote a staffer on March 8th, the same day Jussie Smollett was indicted on 16 felony counts by a Cook County grand jury for filing a false police report on January 29th. Chicago police say Smollett faked a racist and anti-gay attack against himself in downtown Chicago in an attempt to boost his career.

The texts also show Foxx’s office struggled to keep up with a flurry of media requests after the charges were dropped against the Empire star.

“Just wish I could have anticipated the magnitude of this response and planned a bit better,” Risa Lanier, Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney, wrote in one message.

In a statement Tuesday, Kim Foxx said she contacted First Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Joseph Magats following Smollett’s indicted to “discuss reviewing office policies to assure consistencies in our charging and our use of appropriate charging authority.”

“I was elected to bring criminal justice reform and that includes intentionality, consistency, and discretion. I will continue to uphold these guiding principles,” she added.

Smollett was initially charged with 16 counts alleging he lied to police when reporting he had been the victim of a racist, homophobic attack in January.

Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, maintains he told the truth in alleging that two masked men attacked him, yelling racist and anti-gay insults slurs. The actor also claimed that the assailants wrapped a rope around his neck and screamed, “This is MAGA country,” before fleeing.

Prosecutors dropped all charges later that month with little explanation.

Foxx’s office declined to release internal Smollett case files, noting the case had been sealed by a judge.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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EU uses Brexit to boost budget

Calls for extra cash to fill funding gap and pay for new initiatives.

European Commission chiefs are angling to use the urgency of Brexit to reshape the EU budget and push through a longstanding spending cap tied to national income.

The spending cap of 1 percent of gross national income — a measure of overall economic output — has been a cast-iron demand of the EU’s wealthiest countries for more than a decade.

But with the U.K.’s departure projected to leave a hole of up to €14 billion a year, and new imperatives to spend more on initiatives like defense and border protection, Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger is pushing EU leaders to lift the cap.

To fill the Brexit gap and meet new priorities, Oettinger said Wednesday that EU countries would likely have to add €16 billion or more a year to the EU’s annual budget — or roughly 10 percent, given the 2018 budget of €161. 8 billion — a huge increase compared to national budgets.

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Speaking Wednesday at a news conference on a new long-term budget plan, known as the Multiannual Financial Framework, Oettinger predicted a tough fight to win unanimous support for the Commission’s proposals.

Already some wealthier EU countries are balking at any increase, and fiscal experts say that a general climate of political distrust will make it extremely difficult to convince national capitals to send more money to Brussels.

“It cannot be that in a smaller European Union it means that you have to pay a lot more,” Austria’s European Affairs Minister Gernot Blümel said this week at a high-level conference on the EU’s long-term budget.

Maria Demertzis, deputy director of the think tank Bruegel in Brussels, said that the EU could claim success merely by filling the Brexit budget hole, and that it was unrealistic to expect EU countries would agree to a large budget hike.

“If Austria thinks this way, I just don’t see how anybody else will think differently, certainly big countries,” Demertzis said, adding that suspicion toward the EU in national capitals would pose a major obstacle to raising contributions to the budget.

“Nobody trusts anybody,” she said, “certainly in the narrative between north and south, between east and west, and everybody against the Commission … It’s very difficult to think about any new money being put forward. Any money pooled centrally to do anything is going to be very difficult to find.”

During negotiations over the last two seven-year budget plans, wealthy EU countries have insisted on a spending cap of 1 percent of gross national income (GNI) — a politically potent marker that has often provided a persuasive talking point.

But with the U.K.’s departure, Oettinger has said the budget must grow to “1.1x” — or between 1.1 and 1.2 percent — of GNI. At Wednesday’s news conference, Oettinger repeated his assessment that the Brexit budget gap would have to be filled with an equal combination of spending cuts and increased contributions from EU countries.

In addition, he said new priorities might amount to as much as €10 billion a year. “It’s not so easy to calculate how much will be needed for these new tasks,” Oettinger said.

A spokesman for the Commission, Alexander Winterstein, said the outcome of the budget debate would be determined by the aspirations of EU countries

“Once there is agreement on the priorities, and the level of ambition, the rest will follow,” he said. “Remember: everything that is done — with added value — at EU level saves money for national budgets.”

Cuts are likely to be concentrated in two of the EU’s biggest spending areas: the Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion funds, which support projects in the bloc’s economically poorer nations.

As for increased spending, Fabian Zuleeg, the chief executive and chief economist of the European Policy Centre, said he expects that overall the EU’s new budget would likely end up flat, with the Brexit hole plugged by officials asked to do more with roughly the same amount of money.

He added it is not surprising to hear the Commission seeming to push for a big increase at this point in the negotiation cycle. “At this stage, yes, there is usually an argument from the Commission that there is a need for a bigger budget,” he said. “There is also usually a relatively quick response from the net payers, which says that is not going to happen.” He added, “What we then end up with is a negotiation.”

Overall, he said, a relatively flat budget was the easiest to sell from a political perspective. “If you go upwards, where do you stop?” he asked.