Explaining EU expenditure policies
There are three interrelated issues concerning EU expenditure policies that need explaining:
• Why does the EU tax and spend to the amount that it does – in other words, why is the EU budget so small?
• Why is the bulk of expenditure in two main areas – agriculture and cohesion policy – and what explains the decline of agriculture and the rise of cohesion spending?
• Why are some individuals, regions and member states net winners, while others are net losers?
In answering these questions, academic analyses have focused on four different aspects of the making of EU expenditure policies: (1) bargaining over national costs and benefits by th
