At a joint exchange of views between the Committees on Budgets (BUDG) and Budgetary Control (CONT) on Tuesday 27 January, the European Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, Piotr Serafin, presented the proposal for a regulation establishing a horizontal framework for monitoring expenditure and performance for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 (see EUROPE 13679/2).
According to the Commission, this is not a paradigm shift, but an effort to ensure consistency and consolidation of existing rules.
Performance rules already exist in the current MFF, but are scattered across more than fifty legal acts. The aim is to establish a single framework covering the entire EU budget, in order to increase transparency and accountability and reduce administrative burdens.
The proposal is based on a number of horizontal principles covering climate and the environment, ‘Do No Significant Harm’, social policies, and gender equality.
The Commission is proposing a legally binding target of 35% of spending on climate and the environment, with specific targets for each programme. The application of the principle of Do No Significant Harm would be based on Commission guidelines, a choice justified by the desire to preserve a degree of flexibility in the implementation of the future financial framework.
Nicolas Herbst (EPP, German), co-rapporteur for the text, questioned the added value of a new regulation when a number of principles already feature in the financial regulation. He also questioned the choice of including the climate objective in this text rather than in the interinstitutional agreement, and the lack of real impact indicators.
Jean-Marc Germain (S&D, French) reiterated the importance of making performance an instrument for steering the MFF politically, particularly in the preparation of annual budgets, and not simply an observation tool.
When asked about the political dimension of the text, Piotr Serafin defended the fact that performance should serve transparency and the orientation of budgetary choices, and that it necessarily implied compromises between political ambition and administrative burdens.
He also defended the elimination of the LIFE programme – which aims to support projects in the fields of nature, the environment and climate – in its current form, arguing that its actions could be taken over by other instruments of the future MFF. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)