While Slovakia only has to contribute about €6.8bn, the country is entitled to as much as €20.3bn from the EU 2014-2020 budget, said Dušan Chrenek, head of the European Commission representation in Slovakia.
“The EU budget is only about 1 percent of the EU GDP, but it has essential importance for the European economy, EU cohesion and also for the EU’s global operations,” Chrenek said. “The EU budget is very important also for Slovakia, as the country gets considerable resources from it; 86 percent of all Slovak public investments are co-financed from the EU budget.”
Slovakia is one of the few countries that gets more from the EU budget than it puts in. Chrenek said the current system has not been changed in 25 years and is outdated and more complicated than it needs to be. The European Commission wants to decrease the contributions from member countries based on gross national debt and get banks more involved in coming up with ways to solve the financial and economic crisis they contributed to, according to news reports.
