The restructuring of the European Union’s long-term budget is taking shape, while a European Commission working document on the distribution of current programmes within the new architecture was leaked on Wednesday 12 March. Agence Europe is publishing the document.
In January, the EU institution announced in its roadmap for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (see EUROPE 13577/20) that the current budget programmes would be divided into three funds: single national plans per Member State, a ‘European Competitiveness Fund’ and a revised foreign policy fund.
This breakdown was previously unknown. The working document reveals the avenues being pursued by the Commission. As expected, cohesion policies are included in the national plans. These include, for example, the Cohesion Fund, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund+, the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund, as well as the “Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund” and the Border Management and Visa Instrument.
The idea behind these national plans was to make the EU’s investment budget performance-based, by making EU payments conditional on Member States implementing previously discussed reforms, as was done with the “Recovery and Resilience Facility” (RRF), the budgetary instrument of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan.
More surprising is the presence of the non-pre-allocated component in the national plans pillar, Eulalia Rubio, from the Jacques Delors Institute, pointed out to Agence Europe. The researcher sees “a risk of nationalisation of what was not national” and which came under “criteria set at a European level”. The rationale behind the Employment and Social Innovation programme, the European Urban Initiative and Interregional Innovation Investments was precisely to “break down the national logic and create international links” between players who work in a complementary way on innovation issues, emphasised Eulalia Rubio.
The second European Competitiveness Fund would bring together the funding programme for fundamental research and innovation (Horizon Europe), the Digital Europe programme, the defence and space programme and part of the LIFE programme. This is a reminder that the EU’s environmental policies will henceforth be guided by the imperative of economic competitiveness.
The third fund, for foreign policy, includes the Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans, the Facility for Moldova, Asia, the Pacific and Latin America, and the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance.
The absence of any mention of Ukraine could be indicative of the uncertainty that currently reigns on this subject, according to one source. “The Ukraine Facility is financed outside the ceiling, with a special reserve”, explained Eulalia Rubio.
Generally speaking, the introduction of principles for the nationalisation of funding within the EU budget has raised questions in the European Parliament in recent months. “The purpose of the European budget is to show solidarity, unite and bind us together”, a parliamentary source told Agence Europe. What is more, Parliament’s supervisory powers would be undermined by bilateral negotiations between the European Commission and the Member States, as has already been noted by the European Court of Auditors, in the context of the RRF Facility (see EUROPE 13508/13).
The Commission’s proposal on the post-2027 MFF is expected in July.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/fwr (Original version in French by Florent Servia)