Other analysts say Brussels must be even more ambitious if the EU is to meet the moment. According to Zsolt Darvas, one of the authors of a new study from the Bruegel think tank, the MFF spending envelope needs to double, more or less, to take account of the need for financing the climate transition and paying off its Covid-19 debts.
“The European Union faces growing pressure to deliver on priorities that are increasingly European in nature,” the Bruegel study concluded. “Challenges including the climate and digital transitions, competitiveness, economic resilience, defence, migration management and foreign policy go beyond national borders and demand coordinated and well-resourced responses. But the EU’s main financial instrument, its budget — or Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) — remains stuck in the past.”
Darvas proposed raising the budget to around 2 percent of GDP. Such an increase would put the EU budget on track to meet its share of the additional €800 billion a year Draghi said would be required from the private and public sectors to revive Europe’s economic competitiveness.
Some countries, including France, agree that the EU budget needs to get bigger.
Others, like Germany and the Netherlands, don’t want the budget to grow at all. “Sweden is mindful of not just buying into the narrative that now we need a larger budget because we have new problems to handle,” Swedish EU Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told POLITICO. “We will have to do priorities within the budget.”
Sweden is particularly keen for the MFF to address defense and security, though some analysts say EU law prevents the bloc from making direct military expenditure through its long-term budget. “How exactly that should be formulated or portrayed in the budget, that we will have to come back to,” Rosencrantz said. “But I think defense, security, support for Ukraine as well, also competitiveness — those will be the topics that a new budget should handle.”