{"id":308173,"date":"2025-08-01T03:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/308173\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T03:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:03:09","slug":"meet-stephanie-riso-the-eus-budget-brain-and-toughest-cookie-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/308173\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet St\u00e9phanie Riso, the EU\u2019s budget brain and \u2018toughest cookie\u2019 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A French Commission veteran with scars from the eurozone crisis, Brexit and the EU\u2019s pandemic recovery, Riso has quietly become one of the bloc\u2019s most influential \u2014 and polarizing \u2014 civil servants. At 49 she\u2019s heading up the mother of all assignments: steering the EU\u2019s next budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), away from farmers&#8217; subsidies and regional payouts toward more modern pan-European industrial projects.<\/p>\n<p>Now that the budget draft, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/ursula-von-der-leyen-7-year-budget-plan-european-commission\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Riso&#8217;s fingerprints<\/a> all over it, has been published, it will shuttle between capitals and the European Parliament as a final version is nailed down. It&#8217;s a gargantuan task.<\/p>\n<p>In a city where compromise is usually the order of the day, Riso\u2019s unyielding style has already put some noses out of joint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe MFF has been written by three people locked in a room,\u201d one EU official said, referring to Riso, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen\u2019s head of cabinet Bjoern Seibert, and C\u00e9line Gauer, who oversees the post-Covid recovery fund. Like most of the others quoted in this article, the official was granted anonymity because they don&#8217;t want to breach confidences.<\/p>\n<p>Internally in the Commission, Riso has ruffled feathers by sidelining departments, slashing budget lines, and pushing through controversial reforms with little regard for process or consensus. Officials said her tactics had sparked a mini-rebellion among commissioners, who banded together to block her most radical proposals in a dramatic 11th-hour showdown earlier this month inside the Berlaymont, the Commission\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>What is normally a technocratic, dull process devolved into a late-night political knifing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A French Commission veteran with scars from the eurozone crisis, Brexit and the EU\u2019s pandemic recovery, Riso has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[802,1194,112950,6659,5293,5898,2000,299,5187,6644,809,3209,52252,112951,1220,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-308173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-budget","10":"tag-celine-gauer","11":"tag-crisis","12":"tag-diplomacy","13":"tag-donald-tusk","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european","17":"tag-farmers","18":"tag-negotiations","19":"tag-payments","20":"tag-piotr-serafin","21":"tag-stephanie-riso","22":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","23":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114951291235628798","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}