Brexit hole in the budget: bad news for Romania?
Britain's exit will leave a ten-billion-euro hole in the EU budget. In a bid to plug the gap, cutbacks in regional funding and agricultural subsidies are planned from 2020 on. The Visegrád Group and the Baltic states already issued a joint statement last week criticising the cuts as unacceptable. Now the Romanian press is also discussing how to deal with the looming loss of subsidies.
Not a euro less
Bucharest must also resist the plans, Romanian MEP Siegfried Muresan insists on Contributors:
“Agriculture is the economic sector that has received most EU funding so far [compared to Romania's other sectors]. It has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to competing with European agriculture. Therefore we shouldn't accept our funding being cut by even a single euro. It would be a huge mistake to accept cuts in the agricultural sector simply because our budget in the European Cohesion Fund is growing. These are two entirely different political areas that must be treated separately. It's time for the Romanian government to show with actions and not just with words that it cares about the fate of Romania's agricultural sector.”
Romania can't afford to be shortsighted
It is short-sighted for a poor country to rely entirely on EU subsidies, the Romanian service of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle remarks:
“The EU is a liberal project with socialist components. And precisely this is what makes it so attractive, although we should be aware that this also constitutes a major weakness. For the agricultural sector, which is dependent on European subsidies, any kind of political crisis in the EU represents a major threat. Britain's exit is already a serious sign of what can happen when the rich no longer want to pay for the others, and it is a warning to all those who live from one year to the next, from one subsidy to another.”