The major changes to the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), as proposed by the European Commission for the period 2028-2034, do not necessarily guarantee a better way of spending European funds, according to the European Court of Auditors in a document listing all its opinions on the post-2027 MFF, published on Monday 27 April.
With regard to the overall budget, close to €2 trillion – which would represent an increase of 59% in current prices compared with the 2021-2027 MFF – the Court of Auditors points to the risk, in the event of no agreement being reached on the financial resources (e.g. own resources), of seeing Member States’ contributions rise sharply or the size of the budget being significantly reduced.
For the first time, European agriculture will no longer have a dedicated fund. Built on the model of the financial instrument of the post-Covid-19 NextGenerationEU recovery plan, a European Fund will be used to finance numerous policies such as agriculture, cohesion policy, social affairs and migration, on the basis of single national plans. Member States will draw up national and regional partnership plans which will refine the political priorities and the envelopes reserved for each policy (sometimes with minimum thresholds).
“In terms of spending, merging different policies could compromise the achievement of their objectives and require trade-offs between priorities”, note the European auditors. They point to the risk of significant “divergence” between national plans, citing, for example, a possible weakening of the alignment of agricultural spending with EU priorities, as well as unequal competition conditions for farmers.
The Court of Auditors is not opposed to a reduction in the number of European programmes (from 52 to 16) or to the transfer to the Member States of the management of programmes previously managed jointly by the European and national levels. It does, however, raise the question of the increased administrative burden for Member States. Additional flexibility in the allocation of funds, for example in response to crises, is also likely to reduce the predictability that long-term investments need.
To finance the national and regional partnership plans, Member States will be able to call on a debt capacity of €150 billion. On this scale, it is a “significant innovation”, say the auditors. This new capacity will be supplemented by EU debt to support Ukraine and a specific anti-crisis mechanism worth €395 billion.
Performance. Drawing on the experience of the European Recovery Plan, which was criticised by the European auditors (see EUROPE 13634/23), the Commission suggests that control over the use of the budget should be less linked to costs and more to performance.
However, “the proposed performance framework suffers from weak design, which does not allow to measure what results EU spending has achieved”, warns the Court. It regrets that the proposal on the future MFF does not include a definition of the added value of spending at EU level.
The EU institution also warns that the European Commission, which is responsible for protecting the EU budget, will have to rely for large parts of the MFF on the “often weak” budgetary controls exercised by the Member States.
Finally, the Court of Auditors would like the legislative package establishing the 2028-2034 MFF to facilitate its access to EU budget management information systems.
Since the beginning of 2026, the EU institution has produced the following reports on the next EU budget: - the real scale of the post-2027 MFF (see EUROPE 13796/21); - performance measurement for the ‘European Fund’ (see EUROPE 13815/13); - the common agricultural policy (see EUROPE 13804/7); - the ‘European Competitiveness Fund’ and ‘Horizon Europe’ (see EUROPE 13784/7); - the ‘Europe in the World’ fund (see EUROPE 13805/7); - the Erasmus+ and AgoraEU programmes (see EUROPE 13828/14); - the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (see EUROPE 13805/24).
On Tuesday, the European Parliament will adopt its position on the future EU budget (see EUROPE 13849/14), a few days after the European Council in Nicosia launched major budgetary manoeuvres at the highest political level (see EUROPE 13856/1).
See the Court’s summary: https://aeur.eu/f/lpt (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)