Meeting in Brest on Thursday 26 June, the regional and local leaders of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) called on the Member States of the European Union to adopt a post-2027 Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) that strengthens cohesion and is based on real cooperation between national and regional European players.
Above all, the CoR wants to ensure that the role of local and regional authorities in future national and regional partnership plans (see EUROPE 13641/8) is guaranteed. To this end, it called for “the fundamental principles of cohesion policy - the territorialised approach, the partnership principle and multi-level governance to be enshrined in legally binding terms within the new EU budgetary architecture”, even for “centrally managed policies”.
CoR members were also concerned about the future of cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation programmes after 2027, in the event of “significant cuts” in cohesion policy resources.
“By recentralising and renationalising the governance of the EU’s long-term budget, we risk undermining the very foundations of the European project”, warned Vasco Alves Cordeiro (PES), chairman of the CoR’s Commission for Territorial Cohesion Policy and the EU Budget (COTER).
Sari Rautio (EPP, Finnish), a member of Hämeenlinna town council, has been appointed rapporteur for the post-2027 MFF, which the Commission is due to publish on 16 July (see EUROPE 13667/29). (Original version in French by Florent Servia)