On Tuesday 13 September, the European Parliament called on the European Commission to thoroughly review the functioning of the current EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (2021) and present a legislative proposal for the comprehensive review of the MFF by the first quarter of 2023.
This is the main political message of the European Parliament, which adopted (by 497 votes in favour, 79 against and 53 abstentions) the interim report by Jan Olbrycht (EPP, Polish) and Margarida Marques (S&D, Portuguese) on the 2021 MFF revision proposal.
The proposals submitted by the Commission on 22 December 2021 to create the next generation of own resources for the EU budget and to revise the 2021-2027 MFF are linked to the Fit for 55 package presented on 14 July 2021.
The European Parliament feels that a more “in-depth review of the current MFF” is necessary, as it has already reached its limits in its first year.
The European Parliament calls on the Council and the Commission to take into account the following recommendations and amendments:
- the impact of the revised financial package of the Social Climate Fund should be reflected throughout this Regulation, including in its Annex;
- an automatic technical adjustment of the ceilings for commitment appropriations under heading 3 and the ceiling for payment appropriations should be introduced to ensure that additional allocations are made available to the Social Climate Fund in the event of carbon prices rising to a level higher than the initial assumption;
- the specific annual adjustment based on new own resources should be amended to ensure it can be extended in case of a delay in the adoption of the next MFF.
Furthermore, the European Parliament approved the draft amending budget No 2/2022 on the budgeting of the 2021 surplus (€3.2 billion). The European Parliament would have liked the money to be used rather than returned to the EU countries. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)