During an exchange of views in the European Parliament’s Budget Committee on the proposed Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 on Tuesday 23 September, the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank suggested that the Parliament should not reject national and regional plans (NRPs) outright, but should seek to improve them.
Johannes Lindner and Eulalia Rubio of the Jacques Delors Institute see a number of positive points in the Commission’s MFF proposal (see EUROPE 13682/1): the emphasis placed on funding political priorities, the increased flexibility deemed essential in an uncertain context, and the opportunity to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and cohesion policy to introduce greater flexibility and strengthen the performance rationale.
Necessary flexibility will have to be built into the NRPs and performance-based control will have to be strengthened. To avoid the “renationalisation” of the EU budget, which MEPs rejected outright (see EUROPE 13706/26), national flexibility will have to be limited by establishing common criteria to prevent each Member State from directing funds too much according to its internal priorities. It will also be necessary to clarify governance and democratic control by giving Parliament a stronger role in supervision.
The Jacques Delors Institute pointed out that, inspired by the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (RRF) model, the European Commission had proposed strengthening conditionality (payments in return for reforms). The think tank insisted on the need for independent monitoring of results, and not just by the beneficiary State, which in this case would be judge and jury.
This modernised budget has the merit of encouraging the alignment of national and European policies, redirecting funding towards new common priorities (competitiveness, security, research) - while re-evaluating the share of the CAP and cohesion policy, which account for around 2/3 of the current budget - and proposing new own resources to finance the debt and stabilise the budget.
According to the think-tank, the size of the budget proposed by the Commission (1.26% of GNI) should be seen as a floor, not a ceiling, in the negotiations. The balanced own resources package that accompanies the proposal would make it possible to finance the Next Generation EU debt, repayment of which will begin in 2028. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)