Introduction

Budget questions are generally not considered to be particularly exciting questions—and the budget of the European Union (EU) is considered to be a particularly cumbersome and inaccessible field in view of its complexity. Nevertheless, the European budget negotiations in the summer of 2020, which culminated in a five-day marathon of negotiations between European heads of state and government from 17 to 21 July, made it onto the front pages of European daily newspapers and into the main news programmes. The agreement of the European Council after these epically long and extremely conflict-ridden negotiations was interpreted as a significant integration step: The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke of a “historic moment”, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, of a “Copernican revolution” in the EU and the German Minister of Finance even recognised a “Hamilton moment” of the European Union and interpreted the budgetary decision as an important step of the EU on the way to a European federal state.