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"The priorities should be to deliver growth and jobs which is very important as a concept. We also made of course proposals regarding the efforts of simplification regarding some kind of conditionality. Yes, we need this kind of conditionality, because, let's be honest, sometimes some of expenditure is not the best to support growth. That's why we need to link the objectives of the budget to growth enhancing measures and of course the point of transparency. That's why this conference which is indicated to the own resources issue should also be discussed in detail.
According to some preliminary estimations, and I want to underline because we want to be precise about this: these are very preliminary estimations, that the Commission will present today, the FTT, the Financial Transaction Tax could reduce the Member States' contribution to the EU budget by 50 per cent. I think this is extremely important because it means more money from the financial sector rather than from national, public budget.
The FTT means fairness. The banks have benefited from huge tax payers' support and banks are traditionally undertaxed so I think it makes sense to use part of the FTT to fund the European budget. Better to say replace the national contributions of Member States, part of it, by this tax.
That is why we will insist on this and today Commissioner Lewandowski will present some elements regarding these issues. So I hope it will be a solid, serious negotiation as Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt just said: We know these are extremely difficult discussions."