Future EU Long-Term Budget: All Bets Are Now Off
31 October 2024
Emmanuelle Gardan, Coimbra Group Office Director
Formally speaking, the political negotiations on the next EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) are expected to start in the second semester of 2025 only, once the European Commission will have laid out its legislative proposal for the EU’s budgetary structure and priorities for the period starting in 2028. Member states will then have to unanimously approve the new budget before the end of 2027.
Nevertheless, MFF preparations are already in motion and they have logically accelerated since Ursula Von der Leyen got re-elected for a second mandate in July. In her political guidelines for 2024-2029, the Commission’s President outlined major changes to the EU’s long-term budget as we know it, most significantly a shift from a programme-based to a policy-based approach. She also committed to reduce the number of EU funding programmes, to link EU spending to national reforms in each country, and to create a new ‘European Competitiveness Fund’.
For research and innovation specifically, the Commission Expert Group on the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe led by Manuel Heitor, recently provided, in their excellent report “Align. Act. Accelerate”, several concrete recommendations which the Coimbra Group welcomed and fully supports: raising the budget for FP10 to at least EUR 220 billion, ring fencing it to prevent the initially agreed budget from being cut in future years to fund other activities, better focusing the budget, as well as funding all applications reviewed as excellent across the framework programme.
After the leak, a few weeks ago, of preliminary restructuring plans from the Directorate-General for Budget for the next MFF, which have sparked fierce conversations since then, all bets are now off though. Nothing is decided, far from it, and it has become clear that there is much more to reflect on, and think about, this time than just defending the size of the EU budget and the respective weight of the various spending priorities. What does it mean for Universities?
It is of course much too early to draw any conclusions. The prospects that the framework programme for R&I could be merged with other funds and consolidated into one large single EU Fund for Competitiveness is raising doubts and concerns. The implications, for the Erasmus+ programme, of an EU budget based on policy priorities remain unclear at this stage. But every change also brings new opportunities. In this context, it will be critical that the academic world on one side, and the budget experts on the other side, open to each other, and manage to engage into a constructive dialogue.
And it is of utmost importance that this dialogue on the EU’s future long-term budget takes place both at EU and national levels. This was also one of the key messages delivered by Enrico Letta at the #ResearchMatters event, ‘Invest in the future!’ that the Coimbra Group successfully co-organised in Brussels on 2nd October, jointly with a coalition of a dozen of other leading umbrella R&I organisations. During this event, Letta described himself as “a great supporter” of this advocacy campaign that Coimbra Group embarked on earlier this year, to urge EU and national governments to push funding for R&D in Europe, double the budget for FP10 and protect the latter by ring fencing the budget.
The vital importance of research and innovation, knowledge, and skills development, for the future of Europe has been a central, recurrent and common thread in all EU milestone documents published this year: the EU political guidelines for 2024-2029, the mission letters for the Commissioners-designate, and the Letta, Draghi and Heitor reports. Let’s unite together to make the most of the momentum, and ensure that it effectively translates in the future into more opportunities for Universities.