Italy takes the view that the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the cohesion policy should not necessarily have to pay the price of United Kingdom leaving the EU, or be channelled into the funding for the political priorities to be decided upon in the post-2020 multiannual financial framework (MFF).
There should not necessarily be a swap between funds allocated to agriculture and cohesion and those to be earmarked for European public goods, such as the management of migration flows, security and innovation, said Italian finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, following his meeting with the Commissioner for the Budget, Günther Oettinger, on Tuesday. Instead of making sweeping cuts, it is possible to achieve the same results by assessing the results, not just spending less on the CAP and cohesion policy, he added.
However, Oettinger reiterated that cutting funding for agriculture and cohesion by 5% to 10% was inevitable. When asked about the possibility of making European funding conditional on compliance with European values such as the rule of law, he said that the legal services of the Commission had been asked to assess whether such conditions were applicable, particularly in light of rules stemming from national constitutions. The Commission's proposal on the post-2020 MFF has been brought forward to Wednesday 2 May (see EUROPE 11961).
On her first official trip abroad, which took her to Brussels, the Romanian Prime Minister, Viorica Dăncilă, stressed the importance of not jeopardising either the CAP or cohesion policy, following a meeting with the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani. In the first half of 2019, the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU will oversee the finalisation of the post-2020 EU budget.
Tajani stressed the importance of increasing the EU budget by taxing the Internet giants ('web tax'). On Wednesday, Parliament's committee on budgets will reach its position on the post-2020 MFF (see EUROPE 11946, 11944).
On the sidelines of the Ecofin Council, the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, argued in favour of seeing Brexit as an opportunity to get rid of the unjustifiable rebates granted to certain countries. He argued that national contributions should also be calculated on the basis of actual inflation, rather than the ECB's inflation forecasts. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)