EUROPE We want our pfennigs back B O N N
	POLITICIANS in all Germany’s main parties have suddenly begun to sound like Margaret Thatcher. In rare harmony, they are chanting, “We want our EU money back.” The only point on which they differ is how to get it. The Germans have grumbled on and off for decades about their role as the biggest net contributor to the European Union’s budget. But the unanimity of the current outcry—from government and opposition at both federal and state levels—is all but unprecedented. Even the foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, usually keen to stress that Europe is a cause well worth paying for, has joined the chorus. What has changed? Germans feel a lot less rich than before, and increasingly resent paying well over DM20 billion ($10.9 billion) more a year into the EU budget than they get out of it—especially when well-off countries like Luxembourg (if handsome payments towards the upkeep of EU institutions are included) and Denmark are net recipients.

	Still, irritation would not have come to a head now had it not been for two other factors: the unofficial start of the campaign for next year’s German election; and the European Commission’s announcement that it expects the EU’s budget system to stay much the same until 2006. German politicians are falling over one another to insist that change will come a lot sooner than that. Heading the crowd is the inventive Theo Waigel, the finance minister, who wants net payers to the EU budget to get back two-thirds of that part of their contributions which exceeds 0.3% of GDP. He reckons this would save Germany up to DM7 billion a year and says the scheme must be introduced from 2000. Otherwise, he threatens to obstruct funds meant to help the EU’s poorer regions. Not to be outdone, other politicians have concocted schemes that promise savings of up to twice as much as Mr Waigel’s. There are growing demands that a relatively booming Britain should give up the special rebate the then Mrs Thatcher won for it in the 1980s. Only one strong voice is silent—that of Chancellor Kohl. The last thing he wants (but may not be able to stop) is an EU budget row to complicate the already hazardous path to the euro. Besides, he may have a longer memory than colleagues and rivals at home. In a deal sealed with its EU partners in 1992, Germany won a sort of budget rebate as well as getting extra seats in the European Parliament and an agreement that Frankfurt would be the seat of Europe’s central bank. At the time, people in Bonn thought it a fair bargain. Germany’s real problem with Europe’s budget is not that it pays too much into it but that it gets too little out. This is mainly because so much EU spending goes on farming, which accounts for a rather small share of German GDP. So Germany must be in the forefront of efforts to cut the cost of the common agricultural policy. Right? Wrong. When the European Commission recently presented a new farm-reform plan, Germany turned it down. There are few German farmers these days, but they are highly organised. Not a bunch the government wants to upset as that tricky election looms.  © Copyright 1997 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All Rights Reserved