Seventeen EU countries, including Bulgaria, want farm and regional aid money left untouched in the EU's 2028–2034 budget. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni posted the joint letter, dated October 2, on her profile on X.

Meloni and Romanian president Nicuşor Dan led the push. Ireland currently holds the EU Council presidency, so the letter went to Irish prime minister Micheál Martin, with a copy to European Council president António Costa. Bulgaria's prime minister, Rumen Radev, signed it.

Cyprus, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain signed too.

"We believe funding for cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy must stay at current levels in the next multiannual financial framework," the 17 countries wrote.

They say the EU's new priorities should not be funded by cutting money from farming and poorer regions. Both policies bring countries and regions closer together, strengthen the single market, help rural areas and support Europe's food security, the letter says. The signatories argue the European Commission's current proposal already cuts their funding in real terms, even though the overall budget is growing. Further cuts, they say, would weaken the EU budget and erode public support for the European project.

The signatories accept that the EU needs more money for security and defence, competitiveness, connectivity and energy security. But they say this should come from extra funds, not from shifting money around. They are open to talks on new sources of income for the EU that would ease pressure on national budgets — as long as these are fair, simple, and don't hit lower earners harder than everyone else.

Four days earlier, the Irish presidency got a letter making the opposite demand. Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Finland want several hundred billion euros cut from the Commission's proposed budget of nearly €2 trillion. If that doesn't happen, they warn they will block the deal. Together, these six countries pay close to 40% of the money going into the EU budget.

They want the cuts spread across all spending areas, with more money going to security and defence, competitiveness, innovation and the fight against illegal migration. The same six countries set out their shared push for deep budget cuts in Berlin in August.

The multiannual budget needs the backing of all 27 EU members, plus approval from the European Parliament, before it can pass.