Mr. Blair is expected to announce his planned strategy for the seven-year financial perspective in early October 2005, the Financial Times newspaper reports. EU-wide talks would then start at the 8 November 2005 Economic and Financial Affairs Council in Brussels.
Mr. Blair will reportedly not make an immediate far-reaching reform of the EU's disputed farm subsidy policy a precondition for reaching a deal on the mid-term budget plan. This means that Britain is stepping back from the aggressive stance it took in the aborted June 2005 budget talks.
Mr. Blair's move is seen as a reaction to demands from countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic, who fear that the structural funds they depend on for reviving their economies will be blocked after 1 January 2007 if the EU does not come to a conclusion soon. Speaking to BBC radio on September 21, 2005, former French President Giscard d'Estaing reproached Mr. Blair for having achieved "very little" at half-way mark of the British EU presidency. In a first reaction, the UK Minister for European Affairs, Douglas Alexander, has said: "The right place at which that deal would be done, if we're able to do it, would be at the December Summit."
Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaité has urged heads of state to include the budget issue on the agenda of the 27-28 October 2005 informal summit in Hampton Court: "How can you talk about the future of Europe without a budget? I hope this will be on the agenda."