The European People’s Party (EPP) adopted its position on the post-2027 multiannual financial framework on Wednesday, 18 June. As we revealed at the end of May (see EUROPE 13644/26), the EPP wants the EU budget to focus on European public goods, to bring added value to the EU, and to create “synergies between national and EU projects, while ensuring that the cross-border, local and regional dimensions become more prominent”.
The EPP’s priorities include defence, competitiveness, the EU’s strategic autonomy, food production and food security, cohesion policy, fisheries and aquaculture, funding for the health and biotechnology sectors, and Erasmus+.
The structure. The group continues to oppose national plans—which “would give more power to the Commission”—and believes that the agriculture, fisheries, and cohesion budgets should not be organised based on carrying out reforms, like the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF).
The idea of merging programmes, both within the Competitiveness Fund and the Global Europe Fund, has been met with opposition in the EPP, which fears “opaque budget nomenclature”.
Simplification and governance. The EPP felt, “Overregulation and red tape [are burdensome] for final beneficiaries”. The EU will need to simplify [administrative processes] without this [simplification] encroaching on transparency and without it becoming a “pretext to simply grant more power to the Commission”.
Article 122 TFEU should not be used for legislative proposals relating to the EU budget—as was done for the SAFE instrument in order to strengthen defence (see EUROPE 13627/20).
Own resources. The EU will need to adopt new own resources “to cover the amount of debt repayment and the Union’s higher spending needs”. Incidentally, the EPP remains “seriously concerned about the complete lack of progress in the Council” on this matter (see EUROPE 13660/17).
The political group has backed down on the subject of potential joint borrowing, compared to the draft of its position on the budget that we consulted back in May (see EUROPE 13644/26). Joint borrowing could be considered “under the condition that it facilitates the timely financing of European policies with clear European added value”.
See the EPP’s position: https://aeur.eu/f/hfv (Original version in French by Florent Servia)