“In the future, we will argue in favour of a single budget”, said Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, Romanian) on Tuesday 18 March. The MEP says he supports the RearmEU defence funding project (see EUROPE 13592/1) proposed by the European Commission, even if it takes place outside the framework of the EU budget.
The €800 billion proposed to fund European defence as a matter of urgency is outside of the EU budget. “We don’t like it in Parliament, but there is no alternative at the moment”, explained the European Parliament rapporteur for the post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (see EUROPE 13570/13). Since the current MFF (2021–2027) offers “no flexibility and no increase”, the MEP reiterated that the EPP Group “welcomes and supports” the European Commission’s initiative.
Given the urgency of the situation, the European Commission has proposed borrowing €150 billion on the financial markets and making it available to the Member States in the form of a common loan scheme.
According to Siegfried Mureșan, defence should be one of the priorities of the post-2027 MFF, and if it is to be included “as far as possible” “within the framework of the budget”, it is for reasons of “democratic control by the European Parliament, with existing programmes”. This should “be a starting point” according to the MEP.
In this budget, “all programmes” will have to “be linked to how they contribute to improving the competitiveness and security of the European Union”, said the MEP. The areas of research, innovation, investment and infrastructure could “contribute to improving the EU's security and defence”, he said, by creating “synergies between the main investment policies”.
However, the European Parliament rapporteur warned against generalising the use of common borrowing. The activation of the so-called national evasion clauses in the Stability and Growth Pact, which will allow Member States to borrow from the EU to fund defence, “is justified because we are in a crisis situation”, Siegried Mureșan acknowledged, but he went on to say that this “must not be interpreted by Member States as an invitation to spend more on everything”. In particular, the MEP noted that it remains crucial to preserve a margin for manoeuvre in the event of a future crisis.
Both today (RearmEU project) and tomorrow (post-2027 MFF), defence spending will have to prioritise “European projects” with European added value. To achieve this, investments will have to be made in cross-border projects that have been proposed by several Member States.
The European Parliament’s own-initiative report on the post-2027 budget is expected to be released in May. In this way, the European Parliament intends to influence the European Commission's proposal, which is due to be published in July. However, Siegfried Mureșan noted regretfully that while the European Parliament would like the European Commission to “inform it in good faith of its thinking”, this “has not been the case to date”.
Last week, the European Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, Piotr Serafin, assured the co-rapporteurs that “nothing much was in the pipeline at the Commission”. In the afternoon, the latter discovered a leaked working document (see EUROPE 13598/5), which contained proposals for the distribution of programmes in the MFF. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)