The Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU unveiled, on Thursday 11 June, its Negotiating Box with figures for the EU’s post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). This document is enough to satisfy the 15 or so eastern and southern member countries, including Italy, Spain and Poland, that are pushing to preserve Cohesion Policy (see EUROPE 13874/1). While the Cypriot ‘nego box’ suggests an overall reduction of around 2% compared with the initial proposal presented in July 2025 by the European Commission, its trade-offs largely spare “Heading 1” of the 2028-2034 MFF, which notably includes Cohesion, Agricultural funds (CAP) and Fisheries funds. Conversely, the bulk of this reduction would fall on Heading 2, which includes the new ‘Competitiveness Fund’, and Heading 3, devoted to the EU’s external action.
This is enough to infuriate northern EU countries, such as Germany, which instead argue in favour of prioritising European “new priorities”, such as defence, innovation, industry or migration. They are also unhappy with the overall size of the budget, considered excessive, like the Netherlands (see EUROPE 13886/2).
In detail, the Negotiating Box unveiled cuts the next MFF by €32.8 billion. The total allocation would thus fall to €1.947 trillion (compared with €1.985 trillion in the Commission’s version) – amounts calculated over seven years and at current prices.
While the Cyprus Presidency stresses that this adjustment affects “each of the headings”, the first of them, which will include the future National Plans managed directly by the States (‘NRPP’), shows only a very limited decrease, falling from €1,062 billion to €1,057 billion (again at current prices). Cohesion, which depends on these NRPPs in the same way as the CAP, is not only preserved, with the Presidency even proposing an additional €5 billion for Member States whose GDP per capita is below 90% of the EU average. Twelve states, mainly in the East, but also Greece and Portugal, would benefit from this sum, drawn from the ‘EU Facility for Union Action'.
In the hands of the Commission, this latter programme, which is intended in particular for cross-border infrastructure projects in strategic sectors, would thus fall from €64 billion to €56 billion. It is also clear, under Heading 1, that funding for decentralised EU agencies, such as Frontex, is being trimmed. Their overall allocation in the future MFF would fall from €23 billion to €19 billion. Lastly, the Cyprus Presidency claims a doubling of the amount reserved (‘ring-fenced’) for the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which would rise from €2 billion to €4 billion. The part reserved for the CAP, for its part, remains unchanged. Denying that it has favoured the “Friends of Cohesion” club, Nicosia argues that these historic spending items (cohesion, agriculture, fisheries) were the only ones to suffer net cuts in the Commission’s draft.
Headings 2 and 3 are in any case the main victims of the ‘nego box’, each undergoing a reduction of around 3.9% of the total allocated to them by the Commission.
The ‘Competitiveness Fund’ – the major innovation included in the second heading in order to invest in research, digital, clean technologies, health, the bioeconomy, defence and space - would indeed receive €434 billion, compared with the €450 billion initially planned. The Research Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, is included in this envelope and its allocation would be reduced by €8 billion (falling from €175 billion to €167 billion over seven years).
Lastly, among other things, there is a reduction in the planned funds for “Resilience, Security and Defence ”, cut from €130 billion in the Commission’s version to €125 billion in the Presidency’s.
The allocation for the third heading, ‘Global Europe’, grouping together expenditure in support of the EU’s external action, is reduced by €9 billion. This part of the budget - which includes development aid, neighbourhood policy and support for candidate countries - would receive €206 billion instead of the €215 billion planned by the Commission.
The revenue side remains largely unchanged compared with the Commission’s initial proposal. Thus, there is no mention anywhere of the European Parliament’s three proposals for new EU taxes (on crypto-assets, online gambling and digital giants), which remain far from reaching consensus. By contrast, the Commission’s five own-resources proposals do appear in the ‘nego box’. And this, even though the unanimity required for their adoption remains hypothetical. The document also assumes that the EU will repay the borrowing contracted to finance the post-Covid-19 recovery plan, as planned, from 2028. Several countries, such as Spain and France, are proposing to reschedule this debt, without convincing Germany and others at this stage.
This sensitive issue and that of the future of the reductions hitherto enjoyed by Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on their contributions to the EU budget (the famous “rebates”) are left unresolved. These subjects will be addressed by the heads of state or government, meeting in the European Council on 18 and 19 June.
This Negotiating Box with figures, far from satisfying everyone, is in fact intended to be negotiated over the coming months, with the stated objective of concluding an agreement by the end of 2026.
To see the Presidency’s Negotiating Box: https://aeur.eu/f/mb2 (Original version in French by Clément Solal)