The Diplomat-Aquí Europa
The Spanish Presidency will conclude without reaching an agreement on the mid-term review of the EU Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 and, for this reason, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has taken advantage of the presentation event of the Belgian Presidency to announce the call for an extraordinary Council, which will take place on February 1 in Brussels, to try to reach an agreement between the 27.
In the conclusions of the last Council, held on December 14 and 15, this possibility was already announced given the blockage of negotiations between the Ministers of Economy and the European heads of Government themselves. “It has debated the review of the multiannual financial framework for the period 2021-2027, contained in document EUCO 23/23 and has received the strong support of twenty-six heads of State or Government. The European Council will discuss this matter again at the beginning of next year,” reads the conclusions section of last Friday.
The main problem of the review consists of the request by the European Commission for a budget increase for the coming years, given the exceptional circumstances that the European agenda has gone through since 2021: pandemic and war in Ukraine. This last conflict is the one that most complicates the agreement, since an additional 50 billion euros of aid should be allocated to Ukraine, which forces important EU priorities to be revised downwards in policies aimed at the ecological transition, digital transformation or the new CAP Community Agricultural Policy.
