Prime minister Rob Jetten rejected Brussels’ €2 trillion long-term budget proposal at an informal EU summit in Cyprus on Friday, calling it too excessive and putting an EU-wide flight tax on the table as a partial alternative source of revenue.
The European commission wants member states to sign off a €2 trillion budget for the 2028–2034 period, up from the current €1.2 trillion seven-year framework. The Netherlands is already among the largest net contributors, paying around €10 billion a year, and Dutch officials estimate the new plan could add several billion euros to that bill annually.
“We are already one of the largest contributors. With this proposal, that would explode, and that is not acceptable for the Netherlands,” Jetten told reporters in Nicosia, according to De Telegraaf. He said too much of the budget still went to agriculture and that the overall figure had to come down significantly.
New EU taxes
The commission has also proposed a set of new EU-level taxes to help fund the larger budget. They include a levy on large companies operating in the EU and a tobacco excise duty.
The Netherlands and Germany have rejected the corporate levy, with Jetten calling it “double taxation” that runs counter to efforts to strengthen the European economy. The Hague has fewer objections to the tobacco tax, although Luxembourg, where excise rates are low, opposes it.
In its place, Jetten put an EU-wide air passenger tax on the table. The Netherlands already has the highest flight tax in the bloc, and it is set to rise further from 2027 under measures introduced by the previous government, prompting warnings from KLM that passengers will simply fly from Belgian or German airports instead. A coordinated EU rate, Jetten argued, would prevent that kind of competition between member states.
Jetten is broadly aligned with German chancellor Friedrich Merz, who told reporters in Nicosia that the EU should manage with its current spending levels and that joint borrowing was off the table. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez took the opposite line, calling for the EU’s budget rules to be temporarily suspended and for the Covid-era recovery fund to be extended by 12 months.
EU officials hope to wrap up the budget negotiations by the end of 2026, before elections in France, Italy, Spain and Poland complicate the politics. Each member state has a veto.
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