Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The member states that contribute to the EU budget have already made a decision on how much they are willing to spend for the next seven years. That is very unlikely to change. Extra money is required to complete the budget for 2013 and how to deal with that and where the money will come from are under negotiation at present. The European Parliament is also seeking some other flexibilities. Even though the European Parliament would like the budget to be bigger, it is very unlikely that in the negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council there will be a significant increase, or any increase, in the overall budget because of how difficult it was to get prime ministers to agree on the amount of money their countries were willing to contribute to that budget over the next seven years. It is in the flexibilities the European Parliament has been seeking and some of the other policy-related issues it is seeking to influence that we will find a solution. I certainly hope we can do that. Everybody realises that the stakes are very high if we do not.

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