The main objective of the paper is to empirically test the intuitive and widely held hypothesis that national interests are the driving force behind negotiations for the medium term EU financial perspectives and their outcomes. We test the validity of this hypothesis in case of negotiations for the 2007-2013 next financial perspective (NFP) in three steps: by (1) quantifying national interests in the NFP negotiations, (2) estimating hypothetical coalitions based on the quantified national interests and (3) comparing hypothetical coalitions to the actual (documented) ones. The article confirms the hypothesis that national interests have dominated in case of the 2007-2013 NFP negotiations.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Financial perspective 2007-2013
   1. Main issues in the run up to the NFP negotiations
   2. Commission's proposal and inter-institutional agreement
3. Methodology for determining hypothetical coalitions
   1. Concept of net budgetary balances
   2. Methodology for estimating total and partial net budgetary balances
   3. Methodological issues in cluster analysis
4. Data
5. Results and analysis
   1. Estimates of total and partial net budgetary balances
   2. Hypothetical coalitions based on cluster analysis
6. Actual coalitions in the NFP negotiations
7. Conclusion
8. References
9. Appendix 1: Properties of partial net budgetary balances
10. Appendix 2: Detailed decomposition of “Other” partial net budgetary balances based on the interinstitutional agreement 2007-2013