António Costa, the president of the European Council, is preparing to test governments’ appetite for new budget figures and EU-wide taxes before a leaders’ summit on 26 and 27 November. He wants countries to approve new shared revenue streams, known as own resources, to reduce the sums national governments contribute to the bloc’s budget.
One potential source is now under consideration. The European Commission is examining whether revenue from the global tax agreement on multinational companies could finance the EU’s next seven-year budget, according to four EU diplomats familiar with the discussions. The latest proposal values that budget at €1.82 trillion.
The question reaches back to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2021 agreement, which requires EU countries to impose a 15 percent minimum corporate tax on large multinationals with annual turnover above €750 million.
Countries whose tax systems fall below that rate must charge a top-up tax on large foreign companies. The money is currently collected by national governments.
The Dutch government, for example, collected €449 million in 2026 from returns related to the global minimum tax.
The Commission has yet to set out how much of that revenue it might seek for the EU budget, or how the transfer would work. Its exploration comes as governments have spent more than a year negotiating five proposed new taxes that the Commission estimates would raise €65 billion per year.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, backed directing part of the multinationals tax towards the EU budget at a leaders’ summit in October.
Yet France and Italy are resisting Costa’s effort to secure a budget agreement in 2026. Macron has said: “Starting from January, there will be no political room for concluding an agreement.”
One of the five proposals, a corporate charge known as CORE, would levy a lump sum on companies with revenues exceeding €100 million. It has become the least popular option and is particularly contentious in Germany.
The wider tax arrangement also has limits. The US obtained an exemption from the OECD rules after introducing a national tax arrangement deemed equivalent to the OECD framework.
Costa is pressing leaders to settle the budget by the end of the year. Whether governments will agree to use proceeds already flowing to national treasuries is now part of that broader contest over how the EU pays for its next seven years.
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