The European Commission’s proposed 2028–2034 long term EU budget exemplifies its growing craving for power and money. Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed to strongly increase the “MFF” or Multiannual financial framework from €1.2 trillion to €2 trillion. Also, Brussels seeks to shift fiscal power from member states to the EU, funding an enlarged bureaucracy and expanded spending without fundamental reforms to curb waste or fraud.
The presentation reminds of how taxpayer money is being spent by the EU, and not in a positive way. The European Court of Auditors has consistently raised red flags about inefficiencies and rising misuse in EU expenditure. In 2024, the court reported that €15 billion in cohesion funds had been misappropriated—pointing fingers at both Brussels and national governments for inadequate oversight. But the problem goes beyond mismanagement. According to Professor Vince Musacchio from the Rutgers Institute on Anti-Corruption Studies, between 2015 and 2020, Italy received €70 billion in EU structural and investment funds—half of which reportedly ended up in the hands of organized crime.
💶 🇪🇺 Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday proposed the “most ambitious” €2 trillion 2028–2034 budget to counter global competition and 🇷🇺 Russian aggression.
🛑 But 🇩🇪 Germany, the EU’s top economy, rejected the plan as unacceptable pic.twitter.com/lAjdmxt6Pu
— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) July 17, 2025
Because of this, but also due to strained national budgets, pretty much all governments oppose the EU Commission plan. Notably, Germany and the Netherlands, among other net contributors, are also resisting von der Leyen’s plan to eliminate rebates that reduce their contributions. Meanwhile, countries like Belgium—already struggling with budget constraints—oppose refinancing old loans with new ones to pay back the old loans the EU took on to finance its fraud-prone Covid recovery fund, agreed in 2020. However, such pressure may mount, effectively institutionalizing the Covid fund and replacing the seven-year budgetary negotiations that Eurocrats find so inconvenient.
EU taxation
Taxation is another frontier where the Commission is quietly expanding its reach. Proposals now include EU-wide taxes on large corporations, tobacco products, and even vaping and nicotine pouches. This has drawn sharp criticism from the only country exempt from the EU-wide snus ban. Sweden’s Finance Minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, called the tobacco tax hike ‘completely unacceptable,’ highlighting how the EU Commission not only wants to tax tobacco but also products deemed similar. One of these products, snus, is not banned in Sweden, which gets an exemption from the EU ban on it. Sweden’s data showing 44% fewer tobacco-related deaths and 38% fewer cancer deaths than the EU average, which builds the case for allowing less or non-harmful alternatives to smoking.
Dutch EU Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra strongly backs the EU Commission’s approach. In a linkedin post following the announcement of the long term EU budget plan, he indicates that he fully supports von der Leyen’s approach, especially when it comes to tackling alternatives to tobacco, such as vaping or nicotine pouches, even though they do not contain tobacco. Earlier this year, at a hearing at the European Parliament, he already stated: “Smoking kills, vaping kills.” He thereby equated the two, even though according to the UK government’s health department, “best estimates show e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes.” Shouldn’t one expect more from a European Commissioner?
It gets worse. On linkedin, Hoekstra also claimed that higher taxes on tobacco ‘will help to crack down on fraud & cross-border traffic, counterfeit goods, and tax evasion.’ This is simply incorrect. Every serious study shows that the opposite is true. For example, the EPICENTER think tank cites a study showing that ‘a 1 euro increase in excise duty per pack is associated with a 5 to 12 per cent increase in the illegal market.’
Furthermore, from 2027 on, ordinary households will face estimated additional costs of €700 annually for home heating, plus a 25% hike in fuel expenses due to the EU’s ETS duty. Also from this, the EU Commission wants to derive income.
The EU’s €1.8 trillion cash pot is supposed to make the budget “larger”, “smarter” and “sharper.”
But not everyone has benefited from Ursula von der Leyen’s major spending shake-up.
Here’s our guide to the winners and losers of her initial budget plan👇https://t.co/8SNQcEoTwu pic.twitter.com/v1rkaeSFg1
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) July 17, 2025
Problematic spending
Regardless of how the EU budget is financed, it is key to address fraud and erroneous EU spending. After looking into the EU Commission’s proposals, EU affairs magazine Euractiv points out that one thing is noticeably absent: a serious plan to stop EU cash from being siphoned off by fraudsters.” It notes that “annual losses from fraud – particularly in agriculture, cohesion funds, and procurement – are estimated to exceed €1 billion a year, according to recurring audits by the European Court of Auditors and European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). The true figure is likely much greater, given inconsistent enforcement and widespread underreporting. Most of the money is never recovered, or is clawed back by national authorities rather than the Commission.”
On top of this comes “an unresolved turf war between two EU watchdogs responsible for protecting the budget: the longstanding Commission-affiliated OLAF and the newly created and independent European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO).” The article quotes an EU official who laments the lack of urgency in the Commission’s strategy, stating: “If we’re going to ask citizens to accept budget discipline, we should start by showing that the money isn’t being stolen.’
Furthermore, there is the process behind deciding the budget plan. Reports reveal that even von der Leyen’s fellow Commissioners were kept in the dark about key aspects of it until hours before the public announcement. The European Parliament is incensed—and with good reason. It reminds of the European Commission was condemned by the EU court in Luxembourg in the ‘Pfizergate’ scandal about vaccine negotiations in May. Then, the judges ruled that the European Commission had wrongfully withheld text messages between EU leader Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer boss Albert Bourla. An appeal is currently pending, but it is yet another sign that the administrative culture in the European Commission has completely derailed.
This culture of opacity calls into question not only the Commission’s accountability but its legitimacy. Ultimately, the EU’s drift toward financial self-empowerment—without oversight, consensus, or transparency—poses a fundamental question: Should an unelected bureaucracy be allowed to push for a massive increase to its own budget and its own powers, while ignoring widespread fraud and public resistance against all of this? Unless national governments push back, this trend will only accelerate.
Should EU leaders not finally replace Ursula von der Leyen?
She comes up with with ever more extreme proposals, rejected immediately by many MEPs & governments, coordinated mostly with her own small circle, even keeping EU Commissioners out of the loophttps://t.co/6w0MAVyAmE
— Pieter Cleppe (@pietercleppe) July 17, 2025
Picture: Ursula von der Leyen. copyright picture: © European Union 2019 – Source: EP, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons