The EU’s European Affairs Ministers met in Brussels on Tuesday 17 March to prepare for the European Summit on Thursday 19 and Friday 20 March and to discuss the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034.
“This fruitful exchange of views will allow us to take the work forward, in line with the ambition we have set ourselves (...), namely to deliver a mature negotiating box with indicative figures and general approaches (...) in 2026”, declared the Cypriot Minister for European Affairs, Marilena Raouna, at the end of the meeting.
The European Ministers were invited to defend their governments’ positions on aspects relating to governance and the introduction of new own resources for the three main funding instruments envisaged (National and Regional Partnership Plans, European Competitiveness Fund, Global Europe).
Governance. Overall, the Ministers called for the role of the Council of the EU to be strengthened in the face of the increased flexibility proposed by the European Commission.
The French Minister, Benjamin Haddad, called for stronger “strategic steering” of the EU Council ahead of the annual budget, while his German counterpart, Gunther Krichbaum, insisted on greater involvement of the EU Member States in the implementation of European programmes, taking account of specific national circumstances.
The Dutch Minister, Tom Berendsen, supported a modernisation of the budget centred on competitiveness, rejecting what he saw as an excessive increase in the Netherlands’ national contribution to the EU budget and calling for a stricter political framework, particularly in terms of respect for “EU values”.
Italy’s ambassador to the EU, Vincenzo Celeste, warned against “uncontrolled centralisation of the management of funds in the hands of the Commission”, while Spain’s Secretary of State, Fernando Sampedro Marcos, called for a balance between flexibility and respect for the political priorities defined by the leaders.
The Belgian Minister, Maxime Prévot, defended a more flexible European budget to meet strategic challenges, but, he said, “the proposal needs to be adjusted to restore the institutional balance”.
Several other countries, including Sweden, Poland and Greece, insisted on the need to avoid increased administrative complexity and to guarantee a key role for the EU Council in programming and implementation.
In addition, the steering mechanism envisaged by the Commission gives rise to a number of reservations. Still considered too vague, it could, according to several countries, make the budgetary procedure more cumbersome or affect the stability of national plans.
“The EU Council was, from my perspective, an opportunity to clarify that we are not going to change through the MFF the rules that we have on the treaty, on the interinstitutional balance between the EU Council and the European Parliament”, declared the European Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, Piotr Serafin, at a press conference following the meeting.
Own resources. France has called for work on new own resources to be expedited, arguing that they are essential if European priorities are to be financed without increasing national contributions or reducing investment.
Portugal, Spain and Greece have supported this approach, with the Spanish Secretary of State also mentioning the possibility of recourse to common debt.
On the other hand, the Swedish Minister, Jessica Rosencrantz, was sceptical, believing that these resources would ultimately be a burden on taxpayers, and argued for a more limited budget. The German Minister was open to the idea, on condition that these new resources provided real added value without harming competitiveness, in particular by means of a possible increase in taxation. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)