BRUSSELS ― The European Commission is considering postponing setting out plans for its €1.2 trillion seven-year budget until after next year's German national election.

With Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats trailing in the polls behind the Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany, the EU executive has signaled it may crash past its own July 2025 deadline for laying out its spending proposals and wait for the German vote at the end of September, two EU diplomats with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

Few things in Brussels are as fiercely political as negotiations over the bloc's seven-year budget, which controls spending on anything from agricultural subsidies to support for Ukraine.

A delay would allow the Commission to gauge the preferences of the new German government in its spending proposals, which will touch upon politically sensitive questions such as issuing common debt ― which Germany has long opposed ― to fund European defense.

The Christian Democratic Union, for whom Commission President Ursula von der Leyen served in government under previous Chancellor Angela Merkel, is more fiscally conservative than the incumbent Social Democrats. If current opinion polls are correct, the CDU would be on course to return to power after four years in opposition.

“It would seem quite logical that you don’t propose the MFF [the multiannual financial framework, as the seven-year budget is known] in the middle of the German election campaign,” said a third EU diplomat who like others was granted anonymity to discuss confidential matters.

A senior Commission official conceded that presenting options to fund European defense close to the German election campaign might be politically sensitive because of the country's aversion to common EU debt.

A second official with knowledge of the matter said they were still working towards the 1 July 2025 deadline. A Commission spokesperson declined to comment.

The personnel shake-up in Brussels ― where a new crop of commissioners will take over by the end of the year ― is likely to increase pressures for a delay.

Two officials pointed out that six months ― roughly the time between the new Commission settling in and the budget deadline ― would not be enough to engage in technical assessments and consultations with different departments on the new budget.

In her re-election speech, von der Leyen said she wanted to cut and merge existing programs and create new funds.

The 2021-2027 budget amounted to €1.2 trillion but there are growing calls to add more money for the next seven years to finance new priorities like defense and enlargement to Ukraine and the Western Balkans.

A potential delay to the budget proposal would pile extra pressure on EU capitals to deliver a deal in a shorter timeframe ― but it would carry no legal consequences.

This “would increase the risk of delayed start of MFF programs for sure,” said one of the diplomats.

The usual process sees the Commission putting forward a proposal that has to be amended ― and, ultimately, unanimously approved ― by the bloc’s 27 countries and by the European Parliament before a strict end-of-2027 deadline.

Pushing the MMF proposal beyond the deadline would not be a first. Last time, the Commission postponed the deadline from January to May 2018 to factor in the Brexit-induced changes to the budget.