On Wednesday 15 October, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) unanimously adopted a resolution from all the political groups on the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028–2034, calling on the European Commission to “review” its proposal on ‘National and Regional Partnership Plans’.
According to the European Commission, these national and regional plans must be drawn up jointly by the Member States and regional authorities, and must contribute to the EU’s joint objectives by adopting a tailored approach that takes account of the needs of each Member State and region.
However, the CoR believes that the Commission’s proposal could lead to a “renationalisation of Cohesion policy and agricultural/rural policy”, putting all the sectoral policies covered into competition with each other (see EUROPE 13729/7).
The CoR also calls on the Council of the EU and the European Parliament to negotiate the structure of the future MFF in order to maintain the established practice of shared management of funds and the role of the regions in Cohesion and agricultural and rural development.
Although the proposal mentions the three categories of regions and reserves funds for the less developed regions, the CoR demands that Cohesion policy remains accessible to all regions and that financial allocations be provided for all categories, from the least developed to the most developed.
In March 2026, the CoR will adopt the opinion of Sari Rautio (EPP, Finnish) on the future MFF, which will be supplemented by several opinions on sectoral regulations (see EUROPE 13725/22).
Link to the resolution and amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/izg (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)