Call for evidence! In support of a locally-anchored European budget

Does nationalising its budget make the European project more legible?
Does a dramatic decrease in the number of programmes make accessing EU funding simpler?

In its Communication on the next budget framework, the European Commission proposes 27 national plans – in the vein of the recovery and resilience fund – to ensure each country has greater flexibility in allocating funds according to its national interests.

Despite the efficacy of this idea being unproven, it has already been put forward as the potential backbone of most of the European budget. These ‘national envelopes’ would encompass the major policies at the heart of European construction: the common agricultural policy, and the cohesion policy.
A competitiveness fund would make up the second pillar, with the aim of funding the industrial innovation Europe needs in certain key strategic sectors, which are yet to be defined (though we have our suspicions).
Foreign action (e.g. defence) would be the third pillar.

Rumours around this expected budgetary shakeup have been circulating in Brussels for several months. Like any other public budget, it will shrink – despite the increasingly colossal challenges we face.

This proposal is explosive: it could very well disconnect the European project from its citizenry. With means concentrated on a handful of priorities, and negotiated in exchange for economic reforms between a select number of institutions (mainly a Directorate-General of the European Commission and a member state’s ministry of finance), how is local and regional transformation to be carried out?

Under what conditions could this new architecture reinforce our European Union?

Working with our members and our partners in the Local Alliance, we have identified three conditions:

• A programme of reforms centred on the resilience of public services, of our cities, of our continent. Reforms that give local governments the means to carry out the transformation of their communities, prepare them for climate change and political upheaval, and reinforce their ability to take autonomous action.
• A strong regional and local emphasis for competitiveness policies: public innovation and economic growth have always fed into each other. Localities create prosperity, they organise the necessary infrastructures and enact local policies on resource allocation; innovation cannot be the sole preserve of a handful of industrial sectors.
• True multilevel governance from planning to implementation, involving local, regional, national, and European governments in order to align goals with means.

“Providing more flexibility to spent EU funds to cope with “unexpected challenges”, yes, why not.. But the EU budget should first and foremost prepare us for “expected challenges”: reaching climate neutrality, increasing the resilience of each and every community… We mayors are prepared to invest in our common future. It will be impossible to implement EU policies if we are not full partners in the allocation and governance of EU funds. We do not see how the centralisation of funding will lead to flexibility and efficiency – quite the contrary”
Energy Cities Board, 12 February 2025

The Communication on the future of the European budget is the beginning of a very long saga, a three-year negotiation, each step of which will require the mobilisation of local governments. And to this end, we must organise!

We are putting out a call for evidence: please join us online on 11 March for a discussion in French (and, soon, in English), to share your demands for a budget that truly meets our needs.