The pretty concise position paper of the new German government on the next long term EU budget aka MFF just dropped. It lends clear support to the Commission's bold reform ideas on the MFF architecture while unsurprisingly also remaining German in a few crucial areas. Here are the main elements: - ThreadSky

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social • 3 days ago

The pretty concise position paper of the new German government on the next long term EU budget aka MFF just dropped. It lends clear support to the Commission's bold reform ideas on the MFF architecture while unsurprisingly also remaining German in a few crucial areas.

Here are the main elements:

Comments

lostineu.bsky.social•3 days ago

What a surprise. Von der Leyen and Merz are members of the same party, the CDU, and Merz appointed von der Leyen "Spitzenkandidat" for the European elections in 2024

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

On volume, it says there is "no basis for increasing
the MFF’s volume relative to GNI" but also that the goal is "that NGEU repayments will not have to be made at the expense of the regular EU budget and
its programmes." These two collide: If repayments come on top, the MFF needs to become larger.

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

But in any case, Germany does not want a substantially larger MFF - a position that will be shared widely even by countries like France. What Germany does want is a reformed MFF - status quo should not be the starting point and "European added value" spending should be prioritised.

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is largely what the German position has been on passed MFFs. But there is an interesting sentence in this short paper on what this prioritisation could mean: "The high level of outstanding commitments (RAL) must in principle be taken into account when decisions are made on new allocations."

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

It means that if there are programmes that did not get the money out the door in the current MFF, they should probably get less in the next period. And we know already that this will be especially true for cohesion policy, where delivery is very slow in this period.

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

The German government buys into the idea of a competitiveness fund that consolidates the funding programmes under direct management and emphasises the need for cross-border projects. It also wants a separate Horizon programme, something von der Leyen has already promised.

lucasguttenberg.bsky.social•3 days ago

On shared management programmes, the government buys into switching to performance-based payment and into integrating reform incentives into the governance of structural funds. It is hard not to read this as a resounding support for the Commission plans for consolidated national plans.

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