EUROPE CANNOT ASK THE EU BUDGET TO DO MORE WITH LESS

The EU’s next long-term budget cannot be reduced to a battle over numbers. At a high-level EESC debate with Siegfried Mureșan MEP, the European Commission, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and leading researchers, one message was clear: if Europe wants to deliver on security, competitiveness, climate resilience, enlargement, cohesion and agriculture, it needs a stronger budget and better spending.

The key question for the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework is not simply what percentage of EU gross national income it should represent, but what Europe expects it to achieve and whether it will provide the necessary means. The EESC’s position is clear: new priorities must not be financed by hollowing out existing ones. Security and competitiveness require adequate resources alongside predictable funding for cohesion and agriculture.

As EESC rapporteur Konstantinos Diamantouros noted, the current MFF has also lost real purchasing power: its fixed 2% deflator has lagged considerably behind actual inflation. Meanwhile, divisions remain wide. Germany and like-minded countries want the Commission proposal cut by several hundred billion euro, while the European Parliament and the EESC call for a substantially larger budget. Europe’s new and traditional priorities are not mutually exclusive; both must be financed.

Funding alone, however, will not ensure success. The Commission’s proposed National and Regional Partnership Plans may simplify delivery, but the Recovery and Resilience Facility shows the risks of centralisation. CEPS researcher Eulalia Rubio warned that absorbing cohesion policy into broad national plans could dilute its territorial objectives. Regional authorities must retain a meaningful role where they have the responsibility and expertise to invest.

Organised civil society must also be involved from design through implementation to monitoring. Employers, workers and civil society organisations can identify weak implementation and help correct course. Their participation is not bureaucracy, but a safeguard for performance, and should be embedded in the MFF’s rules rather than left to goodwill.

Europe must also change how it finances its ambitions. Heavy reliance on national GNI-based contributions exposes the budget to domestic fiscal pressures and encourages narrow net-balance calculations.

Philipp Heimberger of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies argued that investments located in one country often generate benefits throughout the single market. The EESC therefore supports new own resources, while distinguishing genuinely new European revenue from transfers of existing national income. Digital taxation and levies on financial transactions, aviation and crypto-related activities deserve consideration where they provide sustainable revenue and address cross-border challenges.

Ultimately, the MFF is also about trust. Citizens will support greater spending on competitiveness and defence only if decisions are transparent, regions are involved and new priorities do not undermine social cohesion. Trust requires meaningful participation and visible results, not better communication after decisions are made,  ECO section president Elena Calistru stressed.

Europe should not have to choose between ambition and cohesion, flexibility and accountability, or European priorities and public trust. The next MFF needs all of them, and resources matching its ambitions. With the timetable exceptionally tight, the October European Council will be a crucial test. The EESC stands ready to keep organised civil society at the heart of the negotiations and delivery.