A diagnosis is the least controversial part of nearly every proposal of the reform of the EU finances. When it comes to define solutions opinions starts to differ. 

The excellent paper by Alfonso Iozzo, Stefanno Micosi and Maria Teresa Salvemini may serve as confirmation of this general rule. It does not devote much of the analysis to the deficiencies of the current financial system of the EU. It proposes changes to the EU budget which are very interesting and which offer a good basis to rethink the purpose of EU finances. 

The paper tries to address long standing problems by the separation of functions of the EU budget. This is an appealing proposition. It is derived from the analysis that depending on the function played by the EU expenditures and their outcome one could expect the possibility of untying quarrels over different budget entries. This however ignores the underlying motivation of decision makers and exaggerates possibilities to frame disputes to better defined and generally smaller problems within each of the proposed parts of the EU budget.