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Northern leaders are asking the EU to do more but with less resources. They're incompatible demands. If you believe the EU must be stronger, then you need to be willing to pay for it. But Brussels-bashing is the easiest lever to pull for unpopular politicians like Merz. My take:

Northern leaders like Merz keep saying it can't be the case that member state budgets shrink while the confederal EU budget grows. But why? If they concede that in order for Europe to be sovereign the EU needs to be stronger, then some spending should transfer from national to European level.

The EU budget amounts to roughly 1% of 🇪🇺GDP. Germany's federal government alone (excluding the Länder state budgets) is 12% of 🇩🇪GDP. The US federal government budget (again, not including state budgets) is 22.8% of 🇺🇸GDP.

Merz is pitching a fit about the new 🇪🇺budget creating 2,500 more EU civil service jobs. There are a total of roughly 55,000 EU civil servants. The German federal government employs 527,000. So that's: 🇩🇪:1 federal employee for every 159 residents 🇪🇺:1 confederal employee for every 7,800 residents

And remember, that's not even counting the civil servants who work for German states or cities. In the Netherlands (a unitary state), there's one civil servant for every 120 residents.