Seventeen EU leaders have urged Taoiseach Micheál Martin, president-in-office of the Council of the European Union, to preserve agriculture and cohesion funding in the bloc’s next long-term budget. Their letter says those policies must remain funded as negotiations continue on the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), keeping national and regional priorities at the centre of the budget debate.
Funding under negotiation
The leaders sent their “reflections ahead of the forthcoming revision of the Negotiating Box,” the presidency’s document for steering and narrowing negotiations on the EU budget. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan signed the letter first.
The signatory countries were Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Hungary. By the time they made their appeal, negotiations on the next MFF had entered a decisive phase.
The leaders acknowledged that the EU faced “an evolving strategic environment” bringing “new challenges but also new opportunities for joint European action.” They said the next budget should address security and defence, competitiveness, connectivity, energy security and resilience, while retaining treaty-based policies.
“The overall volume set out in the Negotiating Box of the Cypriot presidency remains the relevant basis for dealing effectively with all these financing needs,” the letter said. “This isn’t the time for Europe to lower its ambitions.”
Agriculture and cohesion at stake
The signatories argued that cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) promote convergence among member states and regions, strengthen the single market, support rural and less developed areas, contribute to competitiveness and food security, and offer tangible support to millions of European citizens.
They said both policies had adapted to economic and social changes while retaining their treaty objectives. The letter described their benefits as direct and indirect, reaching across the EU.
“We therefore believe that overall funding for cohesion policy and the CAP should be preserved in the next MFF,” the leaders wrote. They said the European Commission’s proposal already imposes real-terms cuts on the two policies, even as the overall size of the MFF increases.
In their view, another reduction would weaken the budget and risk undermining public support for the European project. They also argued that a further cut wouldn’t modernise the budget: the new MFF already involves a fundamental transformation of its structure, programming and spending approach.
New priorities and national contributions
The leaders said new EU priorities should receive appropriate additional resources while agriculture and cohesion funding remain protected. They’re prepared to work on revenue proposals, including new own resources intended to ease direct pressure on national budgets.
Any such resources, they said, should be “genuine, fair, simple and non-regressive,” consistent with a May declaration. They also said they would assess adjustments the Commission has committed to present.
The letter proposed considering a more gradual repayment of NextGenerationEU to create additional fiscal space in the next MFF. The signatories said that option should be assessed for its effect on the overall repayment cost. They also proposed limited, targeted European debt instruments for clearly identified strategic priorities.
On national rebates, the leaders said the current system should have no place in the next MFF, because the circumstances that justified corrections to some member states’ contributions have fundamentally changed. They said assessments should consider both the absolute level of national contributions and each country’s relative prosperity and contribution effort. The signatories remain open to working with the Council presidency.