Klaus Iohannis determined to fight for Romania to get more EU money

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis stated clearly: he will negotiate for Romania to get more EU money during the next EU multiannual financial framework. This will cover the period between 2021 and 2027, but, as compared to the present financial framework, now there is a huge problem: Brexit.

The UK has already left the EU bloc, so the contributors to the EU funds are less. Meanwhile, there are discussions regarding the level of the contributions to the EU budget. There are some countries who want to limit the contributions to the EU budget to only 1%, of the national GDP especially after UK left.

Among them some of the net contributors to the EU budget, including Germany and Austria.

How much money does Romania contribute with to the EU budget each year?

According to the official portal of the European Parliament, Romania contributed with €1.23 billion to the EU budget in 2017, and collected €202 million in customs duties on the EU’s behalf, of which it retained 20% as an administrative fee.

As a comparison of the countries who pays most to the European budget, in 2017 Germany, with a net contribution of €12.8bn, was the largest contributor, followed by the UK, with €7.43bn (£6.55bn). Now, as the UK has already left, the EU budget will be significantly lower.

At the moment, there are nine countries who offer more than they get from the EU budget, and they are the net contributors of the European Union:

• Germany
• France
• Italy
• The Netherlands
• Austria
• Finland
• Sweden
• Denmark
• Ireland

How much money does Romania receive from the EU budget?

Romania gets back more than it contribute. The official data for 2017 shows the following:

In other words, Romania is very much dependent of the European Union budget in order to develop its economy. Agriculture, a domain where Romania is renowned as being the grain yard of all Europe and one of the biggest agricultural products exporters in the EU, shows this dependency. While spending 3,332.10 M€ out of its own budget for Agriculture, Romania gets another 56,486.0 M€ from the EU.

This is why president Klaus Iohannis is decided to protect Romania’s interests during the meetings he has with the European officials and during the negotiations he attends in Brussels these days.

A 1% limit for the contributions of the member states will clearly disadvantage the majority of them, including Romania.

Photo source: presidency.ro