New budget, old dilemmas

After months of fierce haggling, the UK government managed to broker a deal on the EU's new budget at the Union's summit in December 2005. Provided the European Parliament adopts it, the agreement on the EU 'financial framework' will largely fix EU spending for the period 2007 to 2013. Failure to reach a deal in December would have compounded the sense of malaise that gripped the EU after French and Dutch voters rejected the EU constitutional treaty.