On Thursday 30 January, the European Parliament published its draft report on a “revamped long-term budget for the Union in a changing world”. The final version of this parliamentary own-initiative report on the post-2027 long-term budget is scheduled for May.
In this way, Parliament hopes to sway the European Commission before the publication of its budget proposal, scheduled for July. The 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) will be reviewed in the light of the crises of recent years: Covid-19, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the energy crisis.
It is widely accepted that the EU’s long-term budget will need to be increased in order to guarantee funding for its main spending programmes and to be more flexible in order to be more responsive to crises and shocks.
“Designed primarily to ensure medium-term investment predictability”, the MFF will now have to be able to “adjust to evolving spending needs”, reads Parliament’s draft report. To achieve this, Parliament is advocating sufficient margins under each heading, in particular to prevent cohesion policy funds from being diverted in the event of crises.
Parliament recognises that the post-Covid recovery fund model (‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’), which “has helped to drive national investments and reforms that would not otherwise have taken place”, can serve as a model for the next MFF, as envisaged by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13498/11). However, it believes that its shortcomings need to be corrected, namely: involving regional and local authorities from design to implementation, focusing on the results and impact of measures rather than the number of outputs, and ensuring full transparency on the final beneficiaries of EU spending (see EUROPE 13508/13).
One of the challenges of the post-2027 MFF will be to repay the Next Generation EU (NGEU) Recovery Plan loan without affecting political programmes. This condition is essential for the European Parliament. However, according to the parliamentarians, the repayment of the interest on the debt has already, “de facto been competing with the repayment of NGEU borrowing costs” (interest).
But without the adoption of new own resources, budget cuts may be inevitable in the post-2027 MFF, warned the European Commissioner for the Budget, Piotr Serafin, at a meeting with MEPs on Thursday 30 January (see EUROPE 13568/24). In its draft report, Parliament “calls on the Council to adopt [...] as a matter of urgency” the Commission’s proposal on own resources and stresses the need to “explore additional innovative and genuine new own resources” (see EUROPE 13506/20).
Budget headings will also have to be reviewed to meet recent challenges, with priority given to joint investment in defence, health and adaptation to climate change, to “protect against and reduce the impact of natural disasters and severe weather events”, according to Parliament.
Joint investment in defence would generate economies of scale and guarantee the interoperability of equipment and systems. This means supporting the Member States bordering Russia, for whom the war in Ukraine is having “considerable economic and social consequences”.
The budget must be in line with the EU’s priorities of “security, competitiveness and prosperity”, said Siegfried Muresan (EPP, Romanian), co-rapporteur of the text with Carla Tavares (S&D, Portuguese).
Cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy should remain pillars of the EU budget, according to the European Parliament, and research, innovation, Erasmus +, the European Social Fund, energy, transport and digital infrastructures should remain priorities.
The MEPs still have a few months to refine their proposal and try to influence the European Commission.
To see the draft report, go to https://aeur.eu/f/fbg (Original version in French by Florent Servia)