The European Parliament has officially laid out its position on the next MFF, calling for a much bigger budget and increase in social spending.
Yesterday’s vote laid out the Parliament’s demands and red lines for the upcoming negotiations with Council on the next seven-year EU budget and its individual financial programmes.
Below are a few quick Social Platform takeaways:
A larger overall EU budget
As a welcome first step, the Parliament makes the case that more common priorities require more resources, and suggests increasing the overall size of the MFF by 10% to 1.789 trillion euros. Covid-era repayments for the Next Generation EU instrument are to be counted on top of that.
As the European Commission insists on simplification and flexibility in its design of the next budget, the Parliament raises concerns about both. It warns that flexibility cannot be used at the expense of accountability, predictability, transparency and policy coherence. On simplification, its main critique is that the Commission’s proposals primarily benefit its own processes rather than final beneficiaries, thereby exacerbating the democratic deficit in the Union.
Social fund bolstered
Rejecting the European Commission’s proposal to merge all cohesion and common agricultural policy funds together, the Parliament demands a stand-alone European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) with a dedicated financial envelope of 110.73 billion euros (in 2025 constant prices).
We welcome a strengthened ESF, which is essential for delivering on the European Pillar of Social Rights, promoting education, employment and skills development, fostering equality and social inclusion, with particular attention to people in vulnerable situations.
The European Social Fund needs to have its specific objectives and earmark resources to invest in social inclusion. These details will be negotiated in co-decision procedure with Council.
EU Facility slashed
In a surprising move, the only EU programme the European Parliament suggests to decrease is the EU Facility. It combines directly managed instruments supporting EU actions and emerging challenges, and the EP suggests to reduce it by EUR 9,56 billion, to EUR 56,08 billion. The Facility includes among its priorities the promotion of social innovation, inclusion of people in vulnerable situations, and the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights through evidence-based policy.
It is very worrying that the financial support to stakeholders’ capacity at local, national and European levels working on social inclusion, non-discrimination and services may be at risk as a consequence. Investments in these priorities must be kept at least at their current rate.
Engagement of civil society
The partnership principle, reiterating the involvement of civil society actors and multilevel governance, is necessary across the EU budget.
While we welcome the reference to the recently published EU strategy for civil society, which recognises its important role, the push to ensure that civil society is engaged across all headings of the budget was missing.
Civil society must be empowered to provide advice, support and expertise in the development and implementation of EU legislation and policies, and have access to long-term, predictable and sufficient funding.
