The European Parliament’s co-rapporteurs on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) post-2027, Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, Romanian) and Carla Tavares (S&D, Portuguese), warned, on Wednesday 19 February, against the European Commission’s idea of merging numerous funds into a reduced number of budgetary instruments whose management would be entrusted to the Member States (see EUROPE 13577/20).
“We need to make things easier for beneficiaries, not just for the European Commission. We reject the idea to merge everything into one fund”, Mr Mureșan told some journalists. In his view, farmers and researchers should not have to compete for European subsidies, and a beneficiary should not be penalised if their country’s government does not implement a pension reform to which it has committed.
The MEP was reacting to the Commission’s idea of drawing on the experience of post-Covid-19 national recovery plans, which make the granting of European funds conditional on investment and reform. However, he did not say that he was fundamentally opposed to streamlining the EU’s budgetary instruments or to the concept of ‘contractualisation’, which he said could take place at sectoral level, provided that there was greater “transparency and accountability” in the use of funds, as stressed by the European Court of Auditors (see EUROPE 13278/26).
“We are very concerned with simplification of the EU budget”, said Carla Tavares, arguing that transparency in the management of funds is crucial.
Mr Mureșan also stressed the importance of the EU budget providing “European added value”, in particular by stimulating cross-border projects which, even under the European Recovery Plan, are struggling to get off the ground. And he advocates “a greater role” for local authorities, which know the needs on the ground and are quick to consume European funds. These are all arguments against renationalising the management of the EU budget.
In the draft report they presented to the Committee on Budgets on Wednesday, the co-rapporteurs focus on the political priorities of the future seven-year MFF, without putting forward any figures at this stage (see EUROPE 13570/13).
The text will evolve until it is adopted in April by the parliamentary committee, then in May by the plenary session, in order to incorporate contributions from all the parliamentary committees and to take account of the new geopolitical circumstances at a time when the United States is announcing its withdrawal from defence, trade and human rights issues. However, due to a lack of visibility, the budgetary impact of EU enlargement should not be included, as this is the subject of a later revision clause in the draft ‘Mureșan/Tavares’ report.
“We are living a difficult moment for the Union”: the major challenge is “to leave no one behind”, by continuing to finance cohesion policy, while defining new political priorities, pointed out Carla Tavares.
The trick will therefore be to strike a balance between traditional policies (agriculture, cohesion) and new political priorities (security and defence, innovation). However, Ms Tavares pointed out that the EU would “not be able to do more with less” of a budget. Hence the pressure that MEPs and the Commission are exerting on the Member States to make progress on new own resources for the budget.
NGEU. One of the challenges of the MFF post-2027 concerns the repayment of the European Recovery Plan from 2028 onwards, a budgetary burden that the Commission estimates at between €20 billion and €35 billion a year.
The Romanian Christian Democrat issued a clear warning to the Council of the EU: “We will reject a budget that is supposed to pay backNext Generation EU at the expense of the current problems facing the EU”. And to point out that the agreement on the European loan launched to tackle Covid-19 included the creation of new own resources to facilitate its repayment. “If this issue is not clarified, taking on new debt would be very difficult”, he warned. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)