Iain Begg’s response to the CEPS paper ‘A New Budget for the European Union?’

While it is true that the juste retour mentality that has increasingly pervaded budget negotiations since the last major reform twenty years ago has many regrettable characteristics, it will never be easy to arrive at a package of EU spending that escapes this particular curse. The Iozzo, Micossi and Salvemini paper is, therefore, a welcome attempt to find a new approach. It is one of a number of recent contributions to the budget debate that has sought to distinguish more explicitly between the public good and distributive elements of the budget.