In the autumn of last year, the European Parliament came close to rejecting the Commission’s MFF proposal as the basis for negotiations. In October 2025, the leaders of four of the main political groups in the Parliament – EPP, S&D, Renew and Greens/EFA – wrote to President von der Leyen stating plainly that the Commission proposal had not taken the Parliament’s core requests into consideration and demanding an amended proposal reflecting these requests to allow negotiations with the Parliament to move forward (a copy of this letter was made available by Politico Europe).
In response, the Commission in a non-paper (made available by Euractiv) proposed several amendments to its proposal, which were subsequently included in a speech made by President von der Leyen at a plenary debate of the Parliament on the MFF’s architecture and governance in November 2025.… Read the rest