MEPs on the Committee on Budgets (BUDG) have approved the European Parliament’s draft own-initiative report on the post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) on Wednesday 23 April, by 23 votes in favour, 9 against and 2 abstentions. The text will be voted on at the Parliament's plenary session on Tuesday 6 May.
A more ambitious budget. MEPs are defending the idea of a more ambitious long-term EU budget and believe that the current spending ceiling of 1% of Member States’ Gross National Income (GNI) is “not sufficient to deal with the growing number of crises and challenges”.
The EU Council is also expected to adopt the package of new own resources (CBAM, ETS2 and company profits) in order to finance political priorities and at the same time repay the loan used to finance the Next Generation EU recovery plan.
Joint borrowing is seen as “a viable option for tackling major EU-wide crises” (see EUROPE 13620/19), particularly in the areas of security and defence. However, MEPs have warned that investment in defence must not come at the expense of social and environmental spending.
Nor should Cohesion Policy be sacrificed to the imperatives of competitiveness, emphasises the BUDG Commission, recalling “the need to foster economic, social, and territorial integration, deepen the single market, reduce inequalities, and fight poverty and exclusion”.
Parliamentary scrutiny. At this stage, and even if the text only sends a political message, the European Parliament maintains its opposition to the ‘single national plan’ approach envisaged by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13577/20).
MEPs fear the disappearance of certain programmes as a result of fund mergers, as well as a lack of transparency and control, two shortcomings attributed by the European Court of Auditors to the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF), which inspired the notion of national plans (see EUROPE 13508/13). At a time when the lists of final beneficiaries of RRF funds have not been revealed by all Member States, the European Parliament is calling on the European Commission to avoid a similar pitfall with the next MFF.
Flexibility. The proliferation of crises in recent years has highlighted the responsiveness of the MFF. To avoid redirecting funds between programmes, MEPs are proposing that two specific instruments are created: one for disaster relief, and the other for unforeseen situations.
While all access to EU funds must be conditional on respect for the Rule of law and the European Union's values, MEPs are pushing for an intelligent conditionality mechanism that would make it possible to penalise governments without making the beneficiaries of these same countries pay.
The European Commission will present its proposal for the post-2027 MFF in July. Meanwhile, co-rapporteur Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, Romanian) is of the opinion that the Committee on Budgets was sending “a positive signal”. “This is only the first step and I can tell you that it won’t be easy”, added co-rapporteur Carla Tavares (S&D, Portuguese).
See the report: https://aeur.eu/f/gi0 (Original version in French by Florent Servia)