EU Analytics – April 2026 review: EP presents itself fragmented for the multi-year EU budget fight

By Nicolai von Ondarza

The budgetary tightrope, as illustrated by ChatGPT.

Despite further geopolitical turmoil, April was another month in which the EU institutional machine rumbled on. The highlighted vote this month is on the EU’s multiannual budget, the MFF, which showed that for the fundamental decisions, the “von der Leyen” platform from the centre-right and centre-left is still required, and still working.

The other votes in the EP also point in this direction: At least for now, the majorities with the far-right remain the exception and the votes around the centre the norm. In the Council, we had only four public votes, but two of them were quite controversial – and in both cases Germany, among others, was outvoted.

Time to dive in:

Highlight of the month: EP vote on its position regarding the MFF

For this month’s highlight, I choose a closer look at the EP’s vote regarding the EU’s long-term budget, in EU speak the “multiannual financial framework” or, in short, MFF. The MFF sets the overall EU budget for a seven-year timeframe, with the next one covering 2028-2034. The negotiations on the MFF are usually among the most difficult in the EU: Although the EU budget covers only just above 1% of EU GDP (the EP is calling for 1.27% this time), as it stretches over seven years it sounds like an enormous amount of money, and it is of course highly relevant for all discussion of how much member states “pay into” the EU or “get out” of it.

The main action of these negotiations takes place in the European Council between the member states. In the past, there was usually at least one summit where negotiations broke down, including lots of hard bargaining between net payers and recipients, friends of cohesion, supporters of other policy areas, advocates of the EU showing it can also do austerity, and more. In 2020, of course, the negotiations were overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which eventually enabled the adoption of the “Recovery and Resilience Facility” on top of the usual MFF.

Pushing for changes in the MFF proposal

Currently, the aim of António Costa is to get an agreement in the European Council by the end of this year so as not to run into the 2027 French presidential election, though I am personally quite sceptical that this will be achieved. What is important for this analysis is that, after an agreement in the European Council, the European Parliament also has to vote in favour of the MFF.

In the past, this has allowed the EP to push for some marginal changes. Usually in the process, the EP asks for more money than the Commission or member states are willing to provide, and then the EP accepts the European Council result with some adaptations. The vote this month points in a similar direction: In its interim report, the EP is calling for a higher EU budget than the Commission proposed (while many net payers such as Germany want to set it lower). While the EP politically calls for defence and competitiveness as priorities, most of the additions it suggests are in agriculture and cohesion.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Politically, two aspects of the vote are worth highlighting: First, on this fundamental issue for the functioning of the EU, it is still the “von der Leyen” platform of centre-right and centre-left parties that matter. With a few rebels, the EPP, S&D and Renew voted in favour, plus the Greens. The number of rebels shows that depending on the final decision, this time it could become a close call: Overall, only 56% of the EP voted in favour. On the other side, all of the “Patriots for Europe” (PfE) voted against, all of the AfD-led “Europe of Sovereign Nations” (ESN) voted against and most of the ECR abstained. This includes the Italian ECR deputies from Meloni’s party FdI, who all abstained. Together, this shows that if the “von der Leyen” platform ever really breaks down, it will be hard for the EPP to get a majority for the EU budget with the far-right.

Secondly, the vote also creates an interesting map showing which national MEPs are reluctant to support the MFF in the form proposed by the EP. The report did not gain a majority amongst MEPs from France, Italy (due to FdI’s abstentions), from frugals such as the Netherlands, Austria or Denmark, from Central Europe (Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia) or from Malta. The reasons are different, but just like the negotiations within the European Council could be even more difficult this time, the vote suggests the MFF will not have smooth sailing in the EP either.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Final votes in the European Parliament

In April 2026, the EP had one plenary session, from 28-30 April in Strasbourg. In terms of the votes, there were a total of 51 votes recorded at HowTheyVote.EU. The comparably high number of votes for one plenary session is due to a series of budget/discharge votes on all the different EU institutions.

Looking at the data from these votes, the picture now familiar to readers of EU Analytics emerges:

On the one hand, the “von der Leyen” platform of centre-right EPP, liberal Renew and centre-left S&D remains the dominant majority. This month, Renew returned to its old centre position by being part of the majority in every single vote, though partially with the far-right. This meant that the S&D and EPP followed behind. But even the Greens were part of the majority in over 85% of the cases, not only in the budgetary vote analysed above but also in the many discharge votes. On the other side of the plenary, the ECR dropped below the Left, while the PfE (47.1%) and the ESN (27.5%) slipped back into a more oppositional role.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

The high degree of institutionalised votes was also visible in the co-voting behaviour. Here too, April 2026 was a month of more “traditional” pro-European votes, with EPP, S&D and Renew having the highest overlap, and the Greens not far behind. In contrast, the ECR was torn between worlds, neither having a strong overlap with the more far-right PfE nor, this month, with the centre-right EPP.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Notably, in my “far-right watch” category, there were two votes for which (parts) of the far-right were decisive for the majority. However, they looked more like weird majorities than like the “Venezuela” majority cases of previous months, where the EPP together with the ECR, PfE and ESN brought whole dossiers through the EP in a semi-coordinated fashion.

The first case was a vote on the financial activities of the European Investment Bank Group, which the S&D, Greens, the Left and also the ESN rejected, so the EPP and Renew got a majority with the ECR and PfE. The second was a rejection of a report on the Protection of the EU’s financial interests (combating fraud – annual report 2024), where only the EPP and (parts of the) ECR voted in favour, so S&D, Renew, Greens, Left, PfE and ESN together formed the rejecting majority. Both look more like accidental majorities to me, but I would need to dig deeper into the individual cases to be sure.

Public votes in the Council of the EU

For monitoring the Council votes, the analysis builds upon the public votes published, which are always fewer. For April 2026, only four public votes were recorded, among the lowest number I have seen while doing this series. Of these, two were adopted by unanimity, but the other two had a notably high number of “no votes”:

• The first contested vote was on a regulation on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques, thus falling in the often contested area of how to deal with GMO food in the EU. Here, six countries voted against (Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) and three abstained (Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany). That meant that it was both one of the closest votes I ever recorded – with only 66.5% of the represented population voting in favour – and showed that the largest EU country, Germany, can still be outvoted even when eight other governments also vote against or abstain:

Public vote on the regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques and their products. Source: Council of the EU.

• The second contested vote regarded the production and marketing of forest reproductive material and had three no votes (Austria, Germany, Slovakia) plus Slovenia abstaining. Again, Germany was outvoted, this time with a full no vote.
• Since Hungary had its important election in April, I will be curious how its voting behaviour changes over the course of the coming months. For now, the Orbán government is still technically in power. Nevertheless, the lifting of the veto on the €90bn loan for Ukraine (which was not a public vote) was already an important shift in policy.

Nicolai von Ondarza is Head of the Research Division EU/Europe of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik).

EU Analytics is a monthly column by Nicolai von Ondarza. It focuses on data-driven analysis of EU institutional affairs, looking at voting in the European Parliament and the public votes of the Council of the EU. The articles are cross-posted here from Nicolai’s own newsletter on Substack, where he occasionally also does other institutional analysis.

Pictures: all graphs: Nicolai von Ondarza; portrait Nicolai von Ondarza: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik [all rights reserved].