The European Union budget for 2014 to 2020 is too high, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned Thursday, one day after the European Commission unveiled its spending plans, DPA reported.
"My first impression is that the commission is going for an overall financing sum that is well over the level that the German government regards as justifiable," Westerwelle said in Berlin.
"In the EU, we have to get a strict spending limit."
The commission has asserted there will be no raise in real terms by spending 972 billion euros (1.4 trillion dollars) in the period, equal to 1 per cent of the bloc's gross national income (GNI).
But the sum does not include several huge price tags including a development fund and the cost of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor.
Westerwelle said the entirety of EU spending needed to come under the 1-per-cent level.
"In the end, from 2014 to 2020, that's about 1,000 billion euros," he said.