Decrying EU leaders’ hatchet job on the long-term budget and recovery plan, the GUE/NGL group will join a vast majority in the European Parliament today in passing a resolution that strongly criticises the conclusions of last weekend’s summit.

The lack of ambition shown in the context of the biggest crisis facing Europe in decades is unacceptable for MEPs, who regret the scaling back of recovery plan grants and the curtailed proposals for the long-term budget*, especially in agriculture, research, climate, and health policy.

For the Left, the summit agreement will plunge countries deeper into debt and put even more pressure on working people as it links funding to conditionalities designed to weaken social rights. Meanwhile, EU leaders saw fit to press ahead with dangerous militarisation plans and showed irresponsible apathy towards governments that actively seek to undermine the rule of law and breach human rights standards.

“The joint resolution co-signed by the GUE/NGL strongly criticises the agreement reached by the Council for both the Multi-annual Financial Framework* and the recovery plan”, says Co-President Manon Aubry.

“This deal is not acceptable for European people: fewer subsidies, more rebates, and budgetary cuts in the MFF (including for agriculture, research, health, the just transition fund) and no planned timeline at all for new own resources. An agreement cannot be accepted if it is the European people who are asked to pay off the debt in the end: we need firm commitments for the creation of a carbon border adjustment mechanism, a financial transaction tax, a wealth tax, and taxation of global corporations.

The joint resolution will send a strong message to EU leaders: the European parliament needs to be respected and democratic accountability is not an option! All political groups must now be coherent and refuse to support any deal if those demands are not met.”

“The summit was a great disappointment,” says Co-President Martin Schirdewan. “The position of the GUE/NGL Group has always been very clear: member states are called upon to provide a comprehensive response to the Corona crisis and to combine the social and economic recovery of the continent with the major challenges of social-digital and social-ecological transformation for the future. The results of the summit are far from this.

“Out of this summit, a new European project could have been born, but national interests dominated.”

 The GUE/NGL’s alternative plan for a post-pandemic Europe is available here.

*The long-term budget is officially known as the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF)