BERLIN — In what can only be described as the most epic financial reality check since someone tried to pay for a Ferrari with Monopoly money, the German government has delivered a devastating blow to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s dreams of spending 1.8 trillion euros on what appears to be the continental equivalent of buying everyone in Europe a really expensive pony.
Germany’s Epic Response: The Art of Saying “Are You Completely Insane?”
A comprehensive increase in the EU budget is unacceptable at a time when all member states are making considerable efforts to consolidate their national budgets, said Stefan Kornelius, spokesperson for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government. This statement was delivered with the emotional intensity of a parent discovering their teenager has charged a NASA space mission to the family credit card.
We will therefore not be able to accept the Commission’s proposal, he added, presumably while practicing his most polite way of saying absolutely not in seventeen different languages and wondering if anyone in Brussels has ever heard of this revolutionary concept called arithmetic.
Von der Leyen’s Galactic Shopping Spree: When Money Becomes Just Numbers
The Commission proposed a central EU budget of €1.816 trillion for the seven-year period from 2028, which is approximately enough money to buy Switzerland, rename it to Ursula-land, and still have enough left over to purchase every unicorn in existence. That figure would represent a major increase from the current budget, back when European leaders still occasionally remembered that money doesn’t grow on bureaucratic trees.
This proposal essentially asks European taxpayers to fund what appears to be the political equivalent of a teenager who just discovered online shopping and decided to buy everything in the entire internet including the websites themselves. It’s like someone walked into a car dealership, pointed at everything, and said “I’ll take all of it, put it on the European Union’s tab.”
The Sacred Art of Magical Money Creation: Tax Everything That Moves
The Commission, operating under the brilliant financial philosophy of “when in doubt, tax it until it stops moving,” presented three new taxes targeting electric waste, tobacco products and high-turnover companies. This represents the European version of solving a financial crisis by pointing at random objects and shouting “THAT SHALL BE TAXED!” like some sort of deranged wizard casting money spells.
The plan apparently involves taxing electronic waste because clearly broken phones should contribute to European unity, taxing tobacco because smokers haven’t suffered enough, and taxing successful companies because making profit is apparently suspicious behavior that requires immediate punishment.
We also do not support the additional taxation of companies proposed by the EU Commission, Kornelius said, which roughly translates to “have you people completely lost your minds or did you just discover that numbers can be infinitely large?”
Merz’s Revolutionary Concept: Maybe Check the Price Tag First
We must maintain the Commission’s reform approach and the budget’s focus on new priorities. This course is the right one to make Europe strong for the future, Kornelius added, while presumably wondering if anyone has explained to the Commission that money is not actually an unlimited resource that magically appears when politicians really, really want something.
Merz has repeatedly emphasized that EU spending must become more efficient instead of just shoveling more cash into the European money-burning furnace. This represents a radical and apparently controversial concept in Brussels known as “not spending money you don’t have on things you can’t afford.”
We must reorganize the priorities in the European budget, the conservative leader said with the weary tone of someone explaining to a lottery ticket addict that buying more tickets doesn’t actually increase your chances of becoming a millionaire. Additional tasks cannot always be linked to additional expenditure, and that is the difficult task we now face, he said, which is German for “just because you can imagine something doesn’t mean the rest of us have to pay for it.”
The Impossible Mission: Getting 27 Countries to Agree on Spending Imaginary Money
The budget needs the go-ahead from all EU countries and the European Parliament by 2027, which represents roughly the same probability as convincing 27 cats to voluntarily take a bath together while singing the European anthem in perfect harmony.
This process will involve months of diplomatic meetings where representatives will employ increasingly sophisticated methods of saying “absolutely not” while smiling politely and pretending that the Commission’s proposal isn’t the economic equivalent of proposing to build a solid gold bridge to the moon using taxpayer pocket change.
Klingbeil’s Epic G20 Reality Bomb: Finance Minister Achieves Maximum Diplomatic Savagery
At first glance, much of what is now proposed by the Commission does not meet with our approval, added German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil from the G20 summit in South Africa, where he was apparently taking a vacation from European financial insanity to deal with merely global economic chaos instead.
We must remain absolutely proportionate when it comes to finances, and I do not see that as being the case, he said, which is finance minister speak for “have you people completely forgotten that money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is not the magical money fairy?”
We also see, for example, that proposals are being made on the issue of tobacco tax that we cannot support at a national level, he continued with the barely concealed exasperation of someone discovering that the Commission apparently makes tax policy by throwing darts at a board covered with random objects and economic sectors.
We want investment to take place in Germany and Europe, and this corporate taxation sends out the wrong signal, he said, which roughly translates to “your tax policy is so spectacularly confused that companies are googling ‘how to relocate business to Mars’ just to escape European financial creativity.”
The Great European Math War: When Numbers Attack
The fundamental challenge appears to be that the European Commission has proposed spending €1.816 trillion over seven years, while Germany has responded with what economists call the mathematical equivalent of “DOES ANYONE IN BRUSSELS OWN A CALCULATOR?” This represents a philosophical disagreement between those who believe money is just really big numbers and those who still remember that money has to come from actual places where actual people do actual work.
This budget dispute has essentially become a continental-scale argument between people who think 1.8 trillion is just a number and people who realize that 1.8 trillion is approximately the combined value of everything most humans will ever see, touch, or dream about in their entire lifetime multiplied by the population of a small country.
The Epic Diplomatic Translation Battle: 24 Ways to Say “You’re Completely Insane”
The rejection process will now involve several months of carefully choreographed diplomatic meetings where representatives will employ increasingly sophisticated methods of explaining basic economic reality to people who apparently skipped every math class ever invented.
These discussions will feature the time-honored European tradition of using diplomatic language so polite that it takes approximately seventeen paragraphs, three interpreters, and a philosophy degree to say “absolutely not, are you completely out of your minds?” while maintaining the appearance that everyone involved still lives in the same universe where money has meaning.
Breaking: European Commission Discovers That Money Is Not Actually Infinite
In related news, sources close to the Commission report that several economists have been spotted frantically googling “where does money come from” and “can we just print more euros until everyone is happy?” One anonymous official was reportedly seen staring at a calculator for six consecutive hours, occasionally muttering “but the numbers looked so much smaller on the PowerPoint presentation.”
Future Prospects: The Art of Compromise in Fiscal Policy
The ultimate resolution of this dispute will likely involve what political scientists call the European method of reaching agreements, which consists of everyone compromising until nobody is entirely happy but the result is technically feasible.
This process typically involves reducing ambitious proposals to more modest ones while maintaining enough of the original vision to justify having had the meeting in the first place.
Conclusion: Welcome to the European Theater of Financial Absurdity
In summary, we are witnessing the spectacular collision between von der Leyen’s trillion-euro fantasyland and Germany’s radical belief that money should actually exist before you spend it. This represents the latest episode in the ongoing European sitcom titled “Things We Can’t Afford But Really, Really Want.”
The ultimate resolution will likely involve von der Leyen dramatically reducing her budget to merely astronomical levels, while Germany continues to practice the apparently revolutionary concept of basic mathematics. Meanwhile, 25 other European countries will pretend to have opinions while secretly googling “how much is 1.8 trillion euros in normal human money?”
The only certain outcome is that somewhere in Brussels, a Commission economist is frantically recalculating whether they can fund European unity by selling the moon to private investors, while in Berlin, a German budget analyst is updating their “Reasons Why This Won’t Work” PowerPoint presentation that now spans approximately 847 slides and includes a comprehensive analysis of why money doesn’t grow on European bureaucratic trees.
Disclaimer: No European budgets were permanently damaged in the making of this article, though several may require intensive therapy and possibly relocation to a financial reality where numbers make sense. All financial figures mentioned are actual proposed amounts and not satirical exaggerations, which somehow makes reality more absurd than fiction. Side effects of reading may include sudden appreciation for basic arithmetic, existential crisis about the nature of money, uncontrollable urge to check if your calculator is working properly, and spontaneous desire to apply for a job as a German budget analyst where you get paid to say “no” to really expensive ideas. If symptoms persist, consult your local economist or consider moving to a small island where the biggest financial decision is whether to buy fish or coconuts.
Author: AI
Published: 17 July 2025