If there was one hearing likely to end early, it was that of the European Commissioner-designate for Budget, Piotr Serafin. Niclas Herbst (EPP, German), co-chair of the session in his capacity as Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control, was openly delighted on Thursday 7 November.
Poland’s Piotr Serafin quickly won over the room and set the tone for the hearing, during which he showed himself to be at ease and sometimes incisive, twice earning applause after defending the “legal” mechanism of conditionality of the Rule of law in the face of far-right MEPs who accused the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, of political discrimination against Hungary.
Following the hearing, the Committees on Budgets and Budgetary Control approved the appointment of Mr Serafin to this post, with the support of EPP, S&D, ECR, Renew Europe and Greens/EFA members, with PfE, ESN and The Left MEPs voting against.
A candidate judged to be competent. “I think it was a really good hearing”, said EPP budget coordinator Karlo Ressler (Croatian). “Everyone has been able to see that he is well prepared and qualified for the job”. His counterpart on the Committee on Budgetary Control, Tomáš Zdechovský (EPP, Czech) considered that “few people understand the European budget as well as he does”, adding that he had not felt that Piotr Serafin looked to be under pressure. Holding the same opinion, Fabienne Keller MEP (Renew Europe, French) did not wait until the end of the hearing to praise the Commissioner-designate’s “precise and targeted” answers when she put a question to him.
The green light given by the S&D, which found that he was familiar with the dossiers, “does not mean a blank cheque”, warned Jean-Marc Germain (S&D, French). The answers we received were “far from addressing [our] concerns”, said the MEP.
A European Investment Commission. The Multiannual Financial Framework was, unsurprisingly, at the centre of the discussions, with the Commissioner-designate announcing in his opening remarks that his “most important task [would be] to support the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in preparing the future MFF”.
The EU’s quest for competitiveness, the financing of defence and security, and the repayment of debts linked to the European Recovery Plan all point to an increased long-term budget for the coming years. “When you were younger, you worked on the financial crisis, now you are going to propose the first wartime budget for the EU”, Janusz Lewandowski (EPP, Polish) told his compatriot.
The MEPs’ questions naturally focused on guarantees of success and the future balance of the budget. Meeting spending needs will require “increased national contributions to the EU budget” or, at the very least, “new own resources”, warned Piotr Serafin in his written answers (see EUROPE 13511/18).
“It will not be possible to meet all the challenges with [a budget] of 1%” of the GDP of the EU Member States, the Commissioner-designate repeated at his hearing. The Pole has pledged to convince Member States to support the proposed package of three new own resources approved by the European Parliament in November 2023 (see EUROPE 13289/10).
The Pole did not hesitate to point out that the Member States had approved the institutional agreement of 16 December 2020, which called for the introduction of new own resources by 2026. Without saying that “things will be simple at the EU Council”, he confirmed that he would defend the three new own resources, based respectively on revenues from the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and statistics on corporate profits.
“The needs will in any case be greater than the resources”, according to the candidate European Commissioner for Budget, who warned that we should not “expect to have as much” as the €800 billion per year advocated by the Draghi report.
A performance-based budget. Confirmed in Piotr Serafin’s written answers, the move from a programme-based budget to a policy-based budget has given rise to many questions.
Will the EU budget be transformed into 27 national plans? “What you have read in the press is not what the European Commission is proposing for the next MFF”, said the Pole. However, the next MFF will include “fewer programmes in the future”. As a result, the future long-term budget should have “greater flexibility” and establish “a link between reforms and investments in the Member States”.
MEPs were concerned about the future of cohesion policy in this new model, given that the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) mechanism on which it is based has left the regions out. “We must not reproduce the RRF in its current form”, acknowledged the Commissioner-designate.
Recently criticised by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) for being difficult to monitor, the RRF mechanism was a source of optimism when it was launched, Piotr Serafin recalled.
The errors (see EUROPE 13501/15) and potential double-funding (see EUROPE 13508/13) caused by the RRF result from a difference in methodology between the ECA and the European Commission, said Piotr Serafin. A dialogue has been initiated, he added.
We now need to “focus on the implementation of the RRF [until 2026] and on the lessons to be learned”.
Competitiveness Fund. “Where will the funding for the competitiveness fund come from?”, asked Carla Tavares (S&D, Spanish), MEP and co-rapporteur for the next MFF.
Although he did not have a “clear answer at this stage”, Mr Serafin said that he was inspired in particular by the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (‘STEP’), because it “is based on this approach”: bringing together funds and transferring them from cohesion policy. STEP, which came into force this year, mobilises funds from 11 EU investment programmes to support projects in clean technologies, deep tech and biotechnology (see EUROPE 13479/25).
This competitiveness fund will focus on the “most critical” strategic sectors, said Piotr Serafin. On this subject, MEPs asked the European Commissioner-designate for the budget whether this expenditure would overlap with other expenditures.
Where will the money go? Defence, the ‘European Green Deal’, agriculture, gender equality, cohesion, social housing, SMEs... MEPs sought guarantees during the hearing. Piotr Serafin, for his part, explained that he could not commit himself “to figures”, but nevertheless felt that the 11% of the budget that aimed to guarantee equality for all by 2023 represented “a lot of money”.
The Commissioner-designate for Budget also reiterated that the European Commission would be doubling support for housing under the Cohesion Fund; that the green transition would not be forgotten, and that “a larger envelope” would be needed for the effort to adapt to climate change, “with immediate aid and not a year later”.
This is further confirmation that the EU budget is about to be completely restructured, to make it more flexible and responsive. “Resources are not adapted to the era in which we live”, agreed Piotr Serafin. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)