BRUSSELS — The European Union is largely about money — who gives it, who gets it and why. In the face of a challenge to European democratic values from Poland and Hungary, Brussels is naturally turning to money to get at least some leverage over the popular, populist governments there.

The struggle at the heart of the European Union has infused what would normally be a humdrum moment in the life of its bureaucracy — the publishing of its proposed long-term budget on Wednesday — with novel importance.

How the European Union disperses its money will be hashed out over months — debated, amended and approved by the leaders of the member states and by the European Parliament, too.

But suddenly at stake in the tedium is whether the money that richer states transfer to poorer ones — long seen as a means of democratizing former dictatorships, like Portugal, Spain or Greece — is instead enabling new ones, namely in Poland and Hungary, among the top money-getters in the European Union.