The Council Presidency, European Parliament negotiators and the Commission have had several trilateral meetings during August and September to try to reach agreement on the seven-year Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) following the European Council conclusions in July. The aim is to reach agreement by the end of October, but according to the Parliament’s negotiators, these discussions are not going well. The Parliament is pointing to the safety net procedure in the Treaty which, in the event of no agreement, provides for a contingency plan which would allow sectoral programmes to start functioning on 1 January 2021 on the basis of the 2020 amounts.
In parallel, the procedure is under way for approval of the EU’s 2021 annual budget which is the first year of the new MFF. This process is greatly complicated by the absence of an over-arching agreement on the new MFF. However, it is important because it will determine, inter alia, the funding available for CAP direct payments in 2020 and rural development spending in 2021.… Read the rest
