The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) has estimated that the overall funding available for EU programmes under the 2028-34 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) should amount to 1.27% of the EU’s gross national income, in its opinion adopted at the plenary session on Wednesday 4 March (see EUROPE 13802/17).
However, this funding would exclude the Next Generation EU (NGEU) programme. The CoR therefore supports the position of the European Parliament, as expressed in the draft interim report published in December 2025 (see EUROPE 13771/26).
The CoR also supports the European Parliament’s ambition to increase national and regional partnership plans and has called for a dedicated budget for cohesion policy throughout the period in order to preserve the long-term dimension of this policy. It felt that this budget should be maintained at least at its current level, taking into account inflation adjustments, and should cover all regions.
The committee urged that the principle of ‘do no harm to cohesion’ be applied to all EU policies, including those designed to boost European competitiveness, which depends largely on the ability of governments to manage resources and policies according to their challenges and needs.
In line with the opinion approved by the Commission for Territorial Cohesion Policy and EU Budget (COTER), the CoR wishes to maintain separate budget lines for cohesion policy and agricultural policy. It considered that the territorialised approach, the sharing of responsibilities and cooperation between the different levels of governance were fundamental and non-negotiable principles of cohesion policy.
Finally, the CoR welcomed the proposals to make the MFF more flexible to respond to unforeseen needs via ad-hoc mechanisms, as well as the new exceptional mechanism proposed in the own resources proposal, which would lower the risk of using long-term investment funds for adjustments. It stressed that, in exceptional cases and in full compliance with the restrictions imposed by the Treaty and applicable European legislation, loan-financed instruments could be an option to raise the necessary resources.
Read the review: https://aeur.eu/f/l1l (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)