BERLIN, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Germany will become the biggest net contributor to the European Union, having to pay $2.4 billion a year more from 2007 to 2013, the government said.
The daily Berliner Zeitung said on Friday it obtained government estimates that Germany's net payments to the EU budget will rise to roughly $12.4 billion. Germany paid $10 billion in 2004.
A government spokesman said Friday the numbers the newspaper provided were "about right."
The article comes just a few days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was hailed as the "queen of Europe" for brokering a deal to agree on the controversial EU budget. Merkel mediated between France and Britain and convinced Poland to sign off on the agreement by handing Warsaw roughly $120 million earmarked for eastern Germany.
Opposition lawmakers have since criticized the deal.
"The compromise is a disaster in terms of finance politics," Herman Otto Solms, of the Free Democrats, told the newspaper. "How can we possibly bring down our federal deficit if we continuously add new expenditures?"
Merkel didn't react to the criticism -- she has left Berlin for some cross-country skiing in the Alps.
