The idea of having an EU budget, including for agriculture, based on political conditions and milestones, as is the case with the bloc’s post-pandemic recovery fund, is “unacceptable,” the outgoing Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski told…
It’s no secret that Europe is facing some of the biggest challenges in its history, from the digital and green transition to climate adaptation and mitigation, along with the need to boost its security and defence resources and enhance its competitiven…
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP/Renew) has clashed with outgoing EU Cohesion Commissioner Elisa Ferreira on Monday (15 July), after suggesting that Cohesion policy might be “overfunded” due to its sluggish absorption rate.
As EU policy-makers mull a reform of the EU’s Cohesion policy that could see regional governments disempowered, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, president of the EU’s Committee of the Regions (CoR), issued a strong warning against this in an interview with Euract…
Two weeks ahead of the European elections, the main EU parties’ lead candidates for the next European Commission president met twice this week to discuss their key priorities, with economy featuring prominently – and blurring party lines.
EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said earlier this week that he had “a lot of sympathy” for the idea of making all of the bloc’s budget “performance-based”. But what did he actually mean by this?
The EU should expand its budget and consider linking all member state payments to structural reforms, EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said on Monday (29 April).
“We need to recall the distinction between a case or investigation and demonstrated irregularity, because [the] investigation might also conclude that there was no actual illegality,” Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told MEPs on Monday (22 April)…
In the debate about a follow-up programme after the end of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a think-tank close to centre-right EPP has criticised “significant flaws” in the current programme, including the lack of a plan for repaying th…
European finance ministers failed to make any breakthroughs on Friday (12 April) on whether to prolong the bloc’s multibillion pandemic recovery fund beyond 2026 and on how the EIB’s investment criteria could be modified to boost defence-related expend…
In this episode of our daily ‘Today in the EU’ podcast, we take a deep dive into the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).
The head of the EU’s auditing body warned that there is “absolutely” a risk that recent news of the alleged embezzlement of hundreds of millions of euros from the bloc’s pandemic recovery fund could reoccur in future.
Given the continued investment needs into the green and digital transition, there was a need for a “permanent” EU-level fund, EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said at an event on Tuesday (9 April), highlighting that the “temporary nature” of the…
The EU’s auditing body has warned that the European Commission’s strategy of relying on member states to ensure the money of the pandemic recovery fund is properly spent is heightening the “risk of irregularity or even corruption”.
Centre-right and national-conservative groups in the European Parliament have voiced strong opposition to a renewed joint-debt programme at the EU level, after calls for a Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) ‘2.0’ mushroomed over the last few weeks …
The EU’s ‘Digital Decade’ faces challenges, including public sector delays, market overheating, and an additional price tag of at least €250 billion, which may hinder reform success across Europe. A more realistic and critical approac…
The implementation of the pandemic recovery funds remains mostly a top-down process, managed centrally and with limited attention to on-the-ground needs, according to local and regional authorities, who are calling out centralising tendencies in the ma…
The ongoing revision of Italy’s recovery plan, which triggered a confrontation with municipalities, carries deep implications for the country’s internal politics, its economy and the EU approach to fiscal integration, making a failure of the plan a no-…
