This morning’s plenary session kicked off with the debate and adoption of a truly landmark opinion on the EU Budget Review. The opinion, authored by Henri Malosse (President of the Employers’ Group) and Gerard Dantin (Employees’ Group) is a pugnacious recognition that the review ‘is not a question of figures but rather a tool serving a political project’. The rapporteurs point out that today’s EU  ‘does not have the budgetary means to implement  either its political strategy or the commitments deriving from the new Lisbon Treaty.’ They insist that the battle of public opinion must be energetically joined and won because if the EU budget is to achieve optimal leverage effect it must be strengthened.