Finally, His Majesty's Government has lifted the fog that separated the continent from the island: on March 29 he will invoke article 50 of the treaty to leave the EU. Symbolic date, not chosen by chance, which follows by only three days the Roman celebrations for the sixty years since the Treaty of Rome. As the United Kingdom (assuming Scotland does not break away) benefited from rebates whereby it was reimbursed 66% of the difference (approximately €14-15 billion) between its contribution to the budget of the EU and the amount it received from it, the negotiations for the definitive exit of the United Kingdom from the EU will necessarily cover these aspects as well.
Brexit, together with Trump's archaic neo-protectionism, is an opportunity to discuss and remove the most important obstacle to the active role of the EU for the growth of Europe at 27: the balanced budget obligation of the EU itself. It is a long story that begins with the Treaty of Rome of 1957 where the constraint of a balanced budget was defined: that is, that the EU budget must be financed entirely through its own resources, the modification of which requires the unanimity of the member states. In this case, in fact, it is the Council which must deliberate according to a special legislative procedure which provides for the unanimity of votes of its members, after only consulting the European Parliament. It should be added that any decision to establish new categories of own resources or to abolish an existing one comes into force only after approval by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. Therefore, unlike what happens in the member states, the budgetary policy commonly understood, is not among the specific functions of the Union budget which is limited to collecting and disbursing funds under budget constraints. It is a constraint, whose economic results are zero-sum, which over time has crystallized every action of the EU.
Over the past few years the EU budget amounted to just about 1% of the Gross Domestic Product of the Union itself; in figures around 140-150 billion euros.
What is certain is that compared to states with a federated structure, the size of the community budget is very modest and therefore unsuitable for achieving the important objectives declared in the treaties. For example, in the US, the federal budget absorbs about 50% of total revenues and expenditures, with the remainder going to the state and local levels of government. As a percentage of GDP, both federal revenues and state and local revenues total 17%. Even within the EU itself, in a country with a federal structure such as Germany, federal revenues amount to around 13% of GDP while those of the Länder and local authorities are around 21%
The obligation of a balanced budget, formally and rigidly defined in the treaties, therefore constitutes the most significant difference with respect to the budgets of the member states. Thus, also due to this constraint, theThe Union does not have an institution with powers similar to those of a treasury ministry aimed at managing the budget in surplus or deficit through the purchase or issue of public debt securities. In fact, it is not permitted by the treaties that a public debt may arise for the European Union (for example Eurobonds), as, for example, is the public debt of the US treasury (Treasury bond). Or the German Treasury (German Bund).
It is a bond, the result of the political decisions of the member states which do not intend to share the burden of a public debt in the name of the Union. It is a bond which, remaining over time, forcibly disregards the cyclical trend of the European economy considered as a whole and the effects that globalization and technical progress have on the productivity of factors in the various sectors of the economy of the member states. But it is also true that in Europe, the division between the EU budget and those of the Member States is highly unbalanced: while the former is, as already mentioned, slightly more than 1% of the total GDP of the Member States, the average of Member States' revenue and expenditure is around 46% of their GDP. This asymmetry makes it objectively difficult to make significant progress in the integration process which, implying the sharing of responsibilities and choices in ever more numerous and vast political spheres, would require that the European level of government be endowed not only with adequate financial resources, but also of political and economic powers – such as a European treasury ministry – which balance the interests of the Union with those of the member states.
