The Multiannual Financial Framework package for the years 2021-2027

As regards the European Parliament's interim report, adopted on 14 November 2018 (COM(2018)0322 – C8-0000/2018 – 2018/0166R(APP)), the views of the CoR and the EP are globally convergent, but the European Parliament's resolution is much more detailed and goes far beyond recommendations/calls of the CoR, both in terms of proposed increases for relevant spending programmes as well as the overall structure of the MFF and principles that apply to it. The CoR opinion was very political and instead of focusing on legislative amendments, it put forward general recommendations regarding the size of the MFF, the own resources' reform, the rule of law and separate programmes.

As regards the CoR legislative amendments, these concern the regulation on the protection of the EU against generalized deficiencies, which has been tackled by a separate report, adopted in the Parliament's Plenary sitting on 17 January 2019 . Out of six legislative amendments put forward by the CoR, only one has been reflected in the EP final report.

As to concrete key CoR recommendations:
no obvious successor to the Europe 2020 strategy, link between the overall MFF and SDG inadequate: ACCEPTED
the future MFF should be set at at least 1.3% of GNI: ACCEPTED
it is unacceptable that the financing of additional priorities is to be at the expense of existing EU policies with proven EU added value: ACCEPTED
the Commission proposal could have been more ambitious as regards own resources: EP more ambitious
the proposal for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) has considerable potential to increase the proportion of own resources, provided that it is made binding for a large number of companies: EP more ambitious
a welcome to the proposed cut to the amounts retained by Member States to meet the costs of collecting traditional own resources: EP less ambitious than CoR
need to make sure that the EU Member States also meet their financial obligations to beneficiaries in the event that a procedure to safeguard the EU's financial interests is initiated: ACCEPTED
increase the budget for policies relating to major new challenges: ACCEPTED
opposition to the proposed 10% cut to the Cohesion Policy budget, views the proposed cuts to the Common Agricultural Policy as unacceptable: EP more ambitious

On Tuesday 10 November the negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council concluded 10 weeks long negotiations on the next long term budget of the EU (Multiannual Financial Framework - MFF) and the Covid-19 recovery measures (Next Generation EU – NGEU) based on the compromise agreed at the extraordinary European Council meeting in July.

The main conclusions of this agreement, in general also backed by the CoR, are the following:

For the first time ever, the European Parliament has managed to increase the MFF as agreed by the Heads of states and governments at the European Council meeting;
After more than 30 years, new own resources shall be introduced to finance in particular costs of the NGEU and therefore lift the burden of national contributions;
The agreement foresees no changes in national allocations nor provisions on financing of Cohesion policy, the Common Agricultural Policy, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) or the Just Transition Fund;
The fresh resources money will mainly come from competition fines, which will be automatically kept in the budget (in the current MFF they go back to Member States);
As regards the flexibility measures, the following order of different instruments has been agreed: 1. use of past margins, 2. flexibility Instrument, 3. borrowing from future margins;
The fact that the EP will need to be consulted on the NGEU gives the CoR (potentially) more influence, but only in case the CoR can engage further in the BUDG committee work. However, the cooperation is hardened due to the special powers the BUDG committee has as the branch of the budgetary authority;
The Rule of Law Mechanism, provisionally agreed on 5 November, is a success for the German Presidency of the Council and the austere Member States (the link of the new mechanism to the next MFF has been subject of the veto invoked by the Polish and Hungarian governments on the MFF and new own resources agreement). The veto exercised by the Hungarian and Polish governments led to an extraordinary European Council meeting on 10-11 December 2020, where Council conclusions on the application of the Rule of Law Mechanism regulations were adopted in order for the veto be lifted.
The surplus from the own resources will stay in the MFF and, therefore, the national contributions will not be as important as in the current or past MFF;