EU budget, Strasbourg warns: defence and competitiveness must be combined with agriculture and cohesion

Brussels – The EU Parliament is setting its spending priorities ahead of the European Commission’s proposal expected in July on the new multi-year budget for 2028–2034. It calls for raising the bar, because “the current spending ceiling of 1 per cent of EU gross national income is not enough to address the growing number of crises and challenges.” From supporting Ukraine to boosting competitiveness to the worsening of the climate crisis, MEPs warn that the “progressive disengagement of the United States from the global stage” will only increase the burden on the old continent.

In a resolution adopted today (May 7) with 317 votes in favour, 206 against and 123 abstentions, the Strasbourg chamber called for a more ambitious financial framework combining traditional priorities such as agriculture and cohesion with new urgencies, defence and competitiveness above all, without sacrificing one for the other. And it rejected the EU executive’s idea to replicate the RFF model—the Recovery and Resilience Facility—that is, to fragment the budget into national plans per member state. In the text, MEPs also warn that the necessary bureaucratic simplification should not “increase the Commission’s room for manoeuvre at the expense of Parliament’s democratic control.”

The president of the EU Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said at a press conference that “we need to act faster when circumstances demand it” and that the EU “cannot afford situations where, when there are disasters or crises, we run out of resources in the course in the middle of the financial cycle.” The Maltese leader emphasised the need to allocate “new resources for the accumulated debt,” otherwise, the risk is that “20 per cent of the next budget will be devoted only to repaying debt.” In the text, the EU Parliament calls for a clear separation between debt repayment and program spending and argues that “joint debt is considered a valuable tool to address common crises at the Union level, such as those in the areas of security and defence.”

Along with Metsola, the two co-rapporteurs of the document for the European Parliament, Siegfried Mureşan of the European People’s Party and Carla Tavares of the Social Democrats, also commented on the vote. For Mureşan, in addition to calling for a more flexible budget to respond to “challenges and developments that we cannot foresee over a seven-year period,” the European Parliament must “defend the traditional priorities of the EU budget, those of agriculture and cohesion.” The EPP suggests that competitiveness and security can be tailored to coexist with agriculture—”a security issue because it has an impact on food security”—and cohesion, which “can be used for projects in the fields of dual-use goods, military and civilian infrastructure, and military mobility.”

Instead, according to the Socialist MEP, “major investments are needed to strengthen strategic autonomy, economic resilience, and green goals, leaving no one behind.” An ambitious budget, Tavares said, “must promote social and territorial cohesion, include new sources of revenue and ensure adequate funding for security, defence and preparedness, while respecting the rule of law and the fundamental values of the EU.”