For two hours, the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets (BUDG), Committee on Regional Development (REGI) and Committee on Agriculture (AGRI) once again held a joint debate on the regulation on the future National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) under the EU’s next long-term budget. At the beginning of June, their three respective co-rapporteurs, Karlo Ressler (EPP, Croatian), Andrey Novakov (EPP, Bulgarian) and Elsi Katainen (Renew Europe, Finnish), had presented their initial draft on how these new plans would operate. That draft report subsequently prompted no fewer than 6,437 amendments tabled by their colleagues at the beginning of July.
It is now a matter of “digesting” this avalanche of amendments which, with the mobilisation of three parliamentary committees responsible for the substance and 11 others asked for opinions, gives the file an “almost unprecedented” scale, Karlo Ressler said. The co-rapporteur set the objective of reaching an agreement in Parliament “by the end of the year”, describing the text as “probably the most politically sensitive” in the post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).
As the major innovation in the 2028-2034 budget, these 27 NRPPs would encompass a series of flagship programmes, including the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Cohesion Policy and policies linked to migration and fisheries (see EUROPE 13682/1). Given what is at stake, several Members from different political sides stressed the need to reach a solid compromise in order to enter the future negotiations with the Council of the EU from a position of strength.
To that end, the co-rapporteurs will be able to rely on a consensual objective in Parliament: strengthening the weight of regional and local levels in future agricultural and cohesion policies. The creation of a single national plan per Member State has in fact raised concerns about centralisation to the detriment of regions, cities and local authorities (see EUROPE 13869/17). The guarantee of “multi-level” governance was already one of the flagship proposals in the draft report by the three Members (see EUROPE 13880/22).
“Local and regional players must not simply have a say, they must have a fully-fledged role in the decision-making process”, and this “regardless of how Member States are organised, whether they are federal, regional ...”, insisted Norbert Lins (EPP, German), Vice-Chair of the AGRI committee.
These players must be “involved in the preparation, implementation, monitoring and revision of the plans”, added German Social Democrat Sabrina Repp, who sits on REGI.
On agriculture, several Members also spoke out against the very idea of absorbing the CAP into future plans, such as the Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen (ECR). “We believe that the CAP must be taken out of the NRPP plans. We will focus our efforts in that direction”, declared the MEP, coordinator for the AGRI committee.
“We want to create specific NRPP plans for the CAP, with their own pillar within the fund, their own rules, autonomous governance and a dedicated budget”, echoed MEP Cristina Maestre on behalf of the S&D group. A shadow rapporteur in AGRI, the Spanish MEP also highlighted a proposal aimed at “ensuring continuity of [agricultural] aid during the 2027-2028 transition period”. The objective is to ensure that no beneficiary “is penalised because of delays at institutional level”.
The German Green MEP, Damian Boeselager, addressed NRPP governance more specifically: he called for transparency on the criteria that will lead the European Commission to approve or reject Member States’ draft plans and wanted Parliament to have an “important” role in this process.
On behalf of the ECR, Ruggero Razza mainly referred to the content of the priorities to be financed within the plans: “First of all, infrastructure: this is an essential priority (…)”, said the Italian MEP. And the ECR’s coordinator in the Committee on Budgets stressed “climate-resilient infrastructure” in particular, notably “to cope with the droughts that are hitting our farms so hard”. Mr Razza also emphasised funding for training in the labour market and for nuclear power.
On the Renew Europe side, emphasis was placed, among other things, on the need for plans to remain “performance-based”, but also on conditionalities linked to the environment and respect for the rule of law (see EUROPE 13909/2). In that regard, the centrist group is defending a principle of “smart conditionality”, whereby regions, cities, universities and other beneficiaries should not pay the price by being deprived of funding when the central state has been guilty of deviating from the Rule of law. (Original version in French by Clément Solal)