Sweden stubbornly stands on the side its opponents call the "stingy" side in the budget battle. Together with countries such as the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Finland and Denmark, it is working to keep down the joint expenses that the EU will have to manage during the years 2028–2034.
The compromise offer recently presented by the country holding the spring presidency, Cyprus, is not liked.
"I have said directly to Cyprus that this is not even the start of talks. This means a dramatic increase in the size of the budget. We need a better budget - not a bigger one," says Kristersson at the ongoing EU summit in Brussels.
Clash with Spain
On the other side are significantly more countries, including large economies such as Italy, Spain and Poland. They welcome the new investments that the European Commission wants to make in defense and competitiveness, but also want to maintain large and strong support for agriculture and regional policy.
No solution is yet in sight. The discussion at today's EU summit is mostly another showdown where both sides present their arguments.
Instead, the fight continues at the civil service and EU ministerial level with negotiations that will lead to another compromise offer, this time from Ireland, the autumn presidency, sometime in October.
"At some point we will agree and if it can happen sometime before 2027 . . . then that is an advantage. But for me the content of the budget and Swedish taxpayers' money will be much more important than exactly when," says Kristersson, who does not feel there is any rush to reach an agreement.
"Sweden definitely has patience. Whoever is in a hurry now will lose."
Talks about China
Today's meeting follows a long session last night that ran into the wee hours, when the heads of state and government mainly discussed Ukraine and the complicated trade relationship with China.
Afterwards, the European Commission was tasked with "developing and possibly supplementing the toolbox for trade defense and industrial policy".
In practice, this means coming up with proposals this autumn at the earliest for new, tougher measures against state-subsidized non-European companies.
There are two clear factions in the discussions about the EU's next long-term budget.
On one side are mainly Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands and even Germany, who want a tighter budget.
On the other side are Poland, Spain, Greece and the Baltic countries, among others, who favor the larger investments contained in the European Commission's original proposal.
The long-term budget will apply for the years 2028–2034. The basic proposal is EUR 1,763 billion, corresponding to 1.26 percent of the EU's total gross national income, GNI. A first compromise proposal is now being discussed, in which the amount has been reduced to EUR 1,730 billion.
