The EU's Spending Explodes |
The EU's Spending Explodes
An increase of almost 70 percent from one financial framework to the next is not merely a budget expansion -- it is fiscal megalomania.
Thomas Kolbe | October 20, 2026
Brussels’ budget negotiations are entering the home stretch. Ireland wants to put the brakes on Ursula von der Leyen’s spending frenzy, at least a little. That is not enough for the German chancellor. Europe’s well-known king of debt is playing the fiscal disciplinarian, putting on yet another media performance for the public.
Ursula von der Leyen has big plans for your money. The money and savings of your children are also attracting considerable interest among the circles of the European Commission in Brussels.
The plan of Brussels’ uncrowned queen is this: starting in 2028, the Commission’s annual budget is to rise from its current €170 billion to €285 billion -- a hefty increase of 68 percent. Von der Leyen wants to round things off at two trillion euros over seven years. The race looks like this: China has a five-year plan. Europe’s central planners are not merely catching up; they are adding another two years. Planning certainty may no longer apply to taxpayers, entrepreneurs, or even employees in the private sector, but for bureaucrats and the self-reproducing armies of civil servants, it remains the lifeblood of the system.
Let us be frank: an increase of almost 70 percent from one financial framework to the next is not merely a budget expansion. This fiscal megalomania conceals a systemic transformation. Brussels sees itself as responsible for everything. A military union is to be created. Europe wants to project power with greater force in the future.
The next phase of the green transformation will also come at a steep price: some €700 billion is to flow into the channels of the green extraction machine.
The latest business idea from Brussels’ redistribution experts, the enforcers of the subsidy economy, is to store captured CO2 beneath the seabed of the North and Baltic Seas. It takes a special kind of........