The center-right European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats, the liberals of Renew Europe, and the Greens had on Oct. 30 sent a letter to the Commission demanding changes to the proposal — especially the way it deals with EU cash for regions and for farmers — and threatening to refuse to engage in negotiations if those changes were not made.
Hours after the Commission changed its plans, those groups are now backing down.
“Victory for the European Parliament in defending farmers and regions in the next long-term EU budget,” Siegfried Mureșan, the EPP’s lead negotiator on the budget, wrote on social media on Monday.
A Renew Europe official, granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO that the group “will not ask for a resolution rejecting national plans to be tabled for a vote in the plenary this week.”
Lawmakers and officials from S&D and Greens also indicated that the resolution is unlikely to come to fruition, despite some misgivings about the Commission’s proposed compromise.
“There is nothing substantial to answer the main demands of the [European Parliament’s] letter,” Jean-Marc Germain, a Socialist lawmaker who works on the budget file, told POLITICO.
