The EU Parliament has big plans for the coming years and is sending a clear message to the Council of Ministers. During the week, MPs positioned themselves for a significantly expanded EU budget in the period from 2028 to 2034. The EU wants to remain able to act without the member states being unduly burdened by additional national contributions. The people’s representatives see the key to this in a fundamental reform of the revenue side, which makes global actors in particular more responsible.
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The focus of the parliamentary position is the introduction of new own resources, which are intended to bring around 60 billion euros into the community coffers every year. An important focus is on the taxation of large technology companies. MPs are calling for a dedicated levy on digital services. It is intended to ensure that companies like Meta’s platforms or other Silicon Valley giants make a “fair contribution”.
The Greens in Parliament, for example, argue that it is simply no longer possible to convey that Big Tech companies are making dizzying profits. Their business model is often accompanied by social upheavals. In addition, the data giants have so far enjoyed tax privileges that medium-sized businesses could only dream of.
Constant transatlantic trade dispute
Parliament’s pounding marks a confrontation with the EU Commission. In mid-2025, the Brussels government institution dropped the plan to levy a tax on large digital companies. The option had been removed from the proposed list of sources of revenue for the next seven-year budget framework. The withdrawal was a diplomatic signal: the Commission did not want to set any unnecessary points in the hot phase of negotiations on a trade agreement with the USA in order to prevent the threat of punitive tariffs.
At the time, observers viewed the move as a victory for US President Donald Trump and tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta. The Republican had already exerted pressure in advance and threatened Canada with retaliatory tariffs if a digital tax were introduced there. These threatening gestures had an effect, but the relaxation did not last. Despite the concessions from Brussels, Trump escalated the situation. He announced that he would increase tariffs on car and truck imports from the EU to the USA to 25 percent. This sentence should apply from next week.
Failed deal?
This means that the framework agreement laboriously negotiated between Trump and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in July 2025 is on the brink of collapse. At that time, both sides had agreed on a tariff cap of 15 percent on most EU goods imports, including cars. In return, the EU promised to remove tariffs on US industrial goods and ease market access for US agricultural products such as pork and dairy products.
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The deal now appears to be invalid, which strengthens supporters of a hard line in Europe. Individual member states are already pushing ahead. In Poland, Digital Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski announced in mid-2025 that he wanted to tap the sales of large tech companies as a source of finance. He was primarily referring to corporations that operate with personalized advertising and user data. The Finance Committee of the French National Assembly voted in October to increase the national digital tax for Google, Apple & Co. from three to 15 percent.
Billion dollar gap and the fight for equity
Against this background, the parliamentary decision seems like a flight forward. The MPs propose to increase the budget volume to around 1.78 trillion euros. This corresponds to an increase of around 10 percent compared to the Commission draft. Parliamentarians warn that the current approach would effectively amount to a stop to investment. The problem: The commission wanted to repay the debt for the Corona development fund within the regular upper limits, which would have limited the scope for future projects.
Parliament, however, is demanding that the debt be dealt with outside the normal budgetary hurdles. In order to finance its ambitious goals, it is relying on a basket of new sources of income in addition to the digital tax. These include levies on online gambling, capital gains from crypto assets and an expansion of the CO2 border adjustment system.
This is the only way the EU can ensure, it is said, that it remains an investment instrument and does not become the manager of the shortage. Funds for strategically important areas such as defense, innovation and digital and ecological change are to be doubled.
A point of contention in the negotiations with the Council will be not only the “how much”, but also the “how” of managing the funds. Parliament rejects the “one plan per Member State” model put forward by the Commission. It fears a creeping renationalization in which transparency falls by the wayside and harmful competition arises between beneficiaries. A “budget à la carte” would weaken the European idea and undermine the Community’s added value. Instead, Parliament is pushing for tried-and-tested structures such as common cross-sector policies, which, however, need to be modernized and adequately financed.
(NO)
