Holland, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Great Britain against Emilia Romagna. The five EU countries oppose the proposal for an "amending budget" for 2012 presented by the European Commission. The correction established the disbursement of 670 million euros for the earthquake in Emilia Romagna by the emergency fund for natural disasters. The no came during the special Econfin meeting on the EU budget underway today in Brussels.
The same member states also opposed a second amending budget which called for the financing of the 8 billion euros missing to pay the bills for cohesion fund programmes, and the 90 billion needed for the Erasmus exchange program for students from the countries members.
Furthermore, the same countries still block the Commission's proposal for the new 2013 budget which calls for a 7% increase over the previous year, due to the fact that it is the last year of the 2007-2013 financial programming period, and as always in these cases, most of the invoices from the programs implemented in previous years fall due.
Negotiations at Ecofin continue with great difficulty, so much so that the budget commissioner's spokesman, Janusz Lewandoski, predicts that the meeting will not end before 3 or 4 in the morning.
