EESC PLENARY: Speech by Enrico Giovannini during the EESC plenary debate on the EU budget 2028-2034

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I would like to thank the President and the EESC for allowing me to share some thoughts, wearing two different hats. As a former minister in the Letta and Draghi governments, I feel compelled to say that, in my view, the overall envelope of this budget is inadequate given the scale of the challenges facing the European Union. I will not repeat the points already made by the other speakers. I have followed the debate very closely, but it is absolutely clear that we are in the midst of a major confrontation with other political and economic blocs. In this context, the European Union needs to invest in its future in several key areas, as set out in the Letta and Draghi reports.

Beyond the issue of the overall budget envelope, I also represent the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development. This alliance brings together more than 300 organisations in Italy — including civil society organisations, business associations and trade unions — essentially covering the dimensions represented in the EESC. Its aim is to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda, both in Italy and across Europe.

So, let me begin by recalling that all European Commissioners received a mission letter from President von der Leyen instructing them to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which are set for 2030. The Commission, of course, serves all EU institutions. Therefore, I believe that all EU institutions should fully commit to achieving these SDGs. Unfortunately, Europe is currently lagging behind in terms of progress, as recent Eurostat and the ASviS reports have demonstrated.

We must therefore accelerate our efforts. In my view, the recent decisions by the Council, as well as the positions adopted by EU countries at recent international meetings — including the 2023 UN SDG summit and the 2024 UN Summit of the Future — to develop transformative and accelerated plans for achieving the SDGs, must be fully taken into account when designing and allocating the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF 2028-2034).

Many European countries have structured their national budgets by linking all expenditure to the different SDGs. I recommend adopting the same approach for the European Commission's MFF, in order to see how much effort is being made, from a financial point of view, to achieve the SDGs.

It is true, of course, that the MFF extends beyond the 2030 Agenda. However, we also know that we are lagging behind. For this reason, it is important to decide what will happen at UN level in 2027 to establish the post-2030 Agenda, to identify clear targets for the European Union and to determine how the MFF will support the achievement of those targets.

The second point I would like to make concerns the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Following a mandate from the European Commission to prepare a strategic foresight report, we have been developing indicators of well-being — what we refer to as "sustainable and inclusive well-being that goes beyond GDP".

I am a member of the UN High-Level Group, established a few months ago, tasked with implementing the Pact for the Future to identify how the global community could move beyond GDP. I believe that the MFF should be clearly linked to this work. In the interests of democratic transparency, it should also demonstrate how the different components of the budget will contribute to achieving more sustainable and inclusive well-being.

Our framework also allows us to measure elements such as resilience, sustainability and inequality. In this way, all the economic, social, environmental and institutional dimensions are reflected in our measurement framework. Of course, I believe that the Joint Research Centre should be involved in this work, in order to link these different components of sustainable and inclusive well-being to the MFF.

Thirdly, and in line with the points already made by the other speakers, I would like to reiterate the need to involve civil society in the decision-making process. EU countries have committed themselves to doing precisely this at the OECD and at the Council of Europe level. However, there remains significant scope for improvement because, beyond the standard consultation process and the valuable work carried out by the EESC, much more needs to be done, especially at national level.

This is also an issue that matters for the European institutions. They cannot simply leave individual Member States to act entirely as they see fit.

From this perspective, my third recommendation is to identify, with the help of the EESC, new forms of consultation, involvement and discussion at European and at national level. These could integrate the two suggestions I made earlier.

My final point concerns the regional dimension of European policies and the allocation of the MFF. I am fully aware that this is a highly contentious issue. There is an ongoing debate on how to strike the right balance between setting clear objectives at national level — as was done under Next Generation EU — and determining the appropriate level of authority of regional authorities and communities at local level in the context of cohesion policy.

We know from a number of studies that cohesion, and social cohesion in particular, is under significant strain across European countries. This, in turn, has a clear feedback effect on trust in institutions and therefore on trust in EU institutions. We have just published a study — in fact, only yesterday —examining how the younger generations in particular perceive and value the European institutions and it is quite clear that they still believe in the European dream, if I may put it that way. However, the challenge lies more with the behaviour and the thinking of older generations, who are much less open and, frankly, less committed to European aims.

For this reason, and I will conclude here, I believe that the involvement of local communities, regional communities and regional institutions could play an important role in establishing and strengthening the relationships between EU institutions and citizens. In line with the points that I made earlier, and beyond the overall budget envelope, I think there are several ways the current MFF proposal could be improved: by better aligning it with the SDGs and targets, by communicating it more clearly in terms of policy transparency and by strengthening democratic support, particularly through the involvement of local, regional and city-level communities in the implementation of European policies.

Professor Enrico Giovannini

Former Italian Minister

Scientific Director, Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development ETS (ASviS)

Professor Enrico Giovannini was invited to an EESC plenary debate on the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034 at the initiative of the Committee's Civil Society Organisations' Group. The debate took place on 3 December 2025.