Craiova: The scrap yards on the edge of this Romanian city handle a fraction of the electrical goods the country throws away each year. Under the revenue plan the Commission tabled for the 2028-2034 budget, that gap stops being a recycling statistic and starts being a bill.
The proposed own resources package asks member states to hand Brussels roughly 58 billion euros a year from sources that do not currently exist. Three of them carry most of the weight. A levy of two euros per kilogram of uncollected electrical and electronic waste would raise about 15 billion. A 15 percent slice of national tobacco excise would raise around 11 billion. A lump-sum contribution from companies with EU turnover above 100 million euros, badged CORE, would add close to 7 billion.
Officials describe the package as a way to repay NextGenerationEU borrowing without squeezing national contributions. Repayments begin in 2028 and run for decades. If no new revenue arrives, the money comes from the same gross national income transfers that finance everything else, which means agriculture, cohesion and research all compete with a debt schedule.
The design of the e-waste levy explains why finance ministries in the east are uneasy. It charges governments for the material they fail to collect rather than the material they generate. Countries with thin collection infrastructure pay most, and those countries also tend to have the least fiscal room to build that infrastructure quickly. Romania collects well under half of what it puts on the market. Malta and Cyprus face similar arithmetic on a smaller base.
Supporters answer that the incentive is the point. A levy that shrinks as collection improves gives environment ministries a budget argument they have never had. Waste operators in Poland and Czechia have already told national associations they expect procurement to accelerate if the levy survives. Whether four years is long enough to build the collection networks is a separate question, and nobody in the sector claims it is comfortable.
Tobacco creates a different problem. Excise rates vary sharply across the Union, so a percentage of national revenue lands unevenly, and the countries with the highest duties would transfer the most. Several delegations have argued that the base should be the harmonised minimum rather than actual receipts, which would cut the yield.
CORE has drawn the loudest business response. Employer federations object that a lump sum unconnected to profit behaves like a turnover tax, and that firms running thin margins on high volumes would pay the same as far more profitable competitors. The Commission counters that the charge is small relative to turnover and administratively simple, which matters when the alternative is another attempt at a common corporate base.
The procedural hurdle is the real one. Own resources decisions need unanimity in Council and ratification by every national parliament. That gives each capital a veto and a domestic audience. The Irish presidency wants a negotiating box advanced enough for leaders to decide at the October summit, with political agreement on the whole framework before the year ends. Revenue is the file most likely to slip past that date, and the least likely to be settled by splitting the difference.
