Freed from the impartiality required by its role as President of the EU Council for the first half of 2025, Poland shared, on Wednesday 2 July, a non-paper on the Multiannual Financial Framework post-2027.
Maintaining the share of the budget allocated to cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), improving the EU’s defence capacities, support for Ukraine, aid for pre-accession to the EU - later, in a special or mid-term review of the MFF -, support for a fair climate and digital transition, but also issues linked to depopulation and ageing societies are among the priorities defended by Poland.
Cohesion and agriculture. “Competitiveness and cohesion are two sides of the same coin”, said Poland. For it, cohesion and the CAP “support economic growth, competitiveness, security and resilience across the European Union”.
As “catalysts for integration”, cohesion and the CAP reduce disparities in socio-economic development between States and regions, argued Poland, which is concerned that these two programmes should be included in the ‘national and regional partnerships’ devised by the European Commission. According to Poland, the CAP should be the subject of a separate budget (see EUROPE 13598/5) and the regions should guide cohesion policy.
In addition, the Member State is calling for the process of convergence of CAP direct payments to be completed at the start of the future MFF, and says that agriculture should contribute to climate and environmental objectives “through financial incentives rather than regulations”.
Poland does not reject the non-cost-related financing approach, provided that the thematic link between reforms and investments is guaranteed. However, the current classification of regions and per capita GDP should remain the primary criteria for allocating cohesion funds.
More generally, Poland is calling for greater convergence and fairness in the geographical distribution of centrally managed instruments.
Security and defence. Poland defends the financing of the development of EU defence capabilities on the basis of the solidarity principle, insofar as defence is, in its view, a European public good. Based on this principle, the Bruegel Institute recently suggested the adoption of an own resource based on an expenditure deficit levy (see EUROPE 13657/19).
While Poland’s total defence spending will represent 4.7% of GDP by 2025, the country is calling on the EU to go beyond developing the industrial base by investing in military mobility, dual-use infrastructure and rapid deployment capacity. ReArm Europe is described as “a good starting point”. Border protection will have to be stepped up, with particular attention to be paid to the EU’s eastern border.
Own resources. Because the EU will have to repay the Next Generation EU loan starting in 2028, and in a context where high inflation has reduced the real value of direct payments, Poland supports the introduction of new own resources and is open to discussion on the issue of a new common debt of the “borrowing for spending” type.
Poland is calling on the Commission to devise own resources from “areas linked to the benefits of the Single Market”, such as taxation of the financial sector, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM is among the package of three new own resources proposed by the Commission in 2021 and blocked at EU Council level), taxation of cryptocurrencies, taxation of multinationals (including the tax on digital services) and processing fees.
On the contrary, new own resources should neither be regressive nor reduce current national budget revenues, but should represent new and additional streams of funds.
To see Poland's position: https://aeur.eu/f/ho9 (Original version in French by Florent Servia)