Month: October 2026

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The Irish Presidency Negotiating Box

The Irish Presidency has yesterday published its proposal for the MFF 2028-2034 negotiating box (‘negobox’) for consideration by the General Affairs Council on 13 October and the European Council summit on October 15-16. The negobox builds on the Commission’s MFF Regulation proposal but reduces its overall size by 8% compared to that proposal.

The MFF negotiations are always a tug-of-war between the Friends of Cohesion (mainly net recipients from the EU budget, in favour of an increased EU budget and supportive of both the Commission proposal and maintaining spending on traditional areas of agriculture and cohesion) and the Frugals (all net contributors to the EU budget, seeking a significant reduction in the size of the budget compared to the Commission proposal and in favour of modernising the budget by switching expenditure from the traditional areas to competitiveness, industrial policy, the green transition and security (read the Friends of Cohesion position here and the Frugals position here).… Read the rest

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The role of Member States in financing the post-2027 CAP

The money likely to be available to support the CAP objectives post-2027 – income support, resilience and sustainability, innovation and competitiveness, risk management and development of rural areas – remains uncertain. The negotiations on the size and allocation of the EU budget appear far from resolution. The next version of the MFF negotiating box (‘negobox’) to be proposed by the Irish Presidency may be produced as early as next week, to give Member States time to digest the figures prior to the General Affairs Council on 13 October and the European Council summit on October 15-16.

As MFF negotiations enter a critical phase, agricultural stakeholders are concentrated on the size of the resources likely to be ultimately available to the CAP. Another focus in the negobox text will be the treatment of issues that are specifically relevant to agriculture such as the MFF inflation adjustment, the 10% rural target, the scale of the flexibility mechanisms, co-financing rates, the use of mid-term review funds and the design of direct payments.… Read the rest