Gathering at their October plenary session, CoR members adopted a fast-track resolution on the Mid-term Review of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020.
With the aim of improving the impact and performance of the EU budget, the relevant European Commission's proposal puts forward several improvements, including the simplification of the implementation of the EU budget, an increase of its flexibility and shifts in the allocation of several key programmes and initiatives.
The CoR resolution, adopted ahead of the EP's positioning expected for the 25-26 October, reacts to the Commission's proposals by:
- deploring the lack of ambition of the European Commission in presenting only a review of the MFF, that is an assessment and evaluation of the functioning of the MFF, instead of a full-scale revision process that would imply a modification of the legislation in place, including MFF ceilings, and provide the EU with a budgetary framework to address current challenges with which it is confronted and to ensure that the EU's budget concentrates on areas that lead to sustainable growth and job creation, with a strong European added value;
- rejecting the impression given in the MFF communication that shared management programmes are not working; and stress the fact that, despite the delays in adopting the new ESIF regulations and the very complex programming procedure, more than 200 000 projects have started and EUR 46 billion of ESIF funds have already been committed to co-finance projects worth EUR 68 billion;
- objecting to the fact that the adjustments made to cohesion policy envelops are included in the mid-term review of the MFF whilst their algorithm is already set in Art. 7 of the MFF Regulation and should therefore not be negotiated by the budgetary authority;
- expecting further improvements in relation to the extension and reinforcement of the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) in the areas of additionality, geographical and sectorial coverage, as well as transparency;
- welcoming the increase in financial appropriations for Horizon 2020 and the Connecting Europe Facility programmes, but underlining that these increases do not compensate for the initial budgetary cuts to those programmes when creating the EFSI;
- regretting that no additional measures have been suggested by the European Commission in the mid-term review to address the various crises to be faced by the Common Agricultural Policy up until the end of the current programming period;
- expressing its concern that the resources available in the current MFF are insufficient to address the growing demands on the EU budget in terms of the reception, distribution and integration of refugees and migrants or their protection in their areas of origin, and therefore calling for more funding for regional and local authorities.
