Publication

In the first phase of negotiations on the new EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the bloc’s net contributors used the notion of “better spending” to try to cap the common budget or even to cut it. The Friends of Cohesion, a group opposed to cuts in cohesion policy funding, saw its concerns about a decrease in the size of the budget take form when the Cypriot Presidency announced that a reduction was inevitable. By meeting the net contributors’ demands to reduce the budget, though, this development eases the possibility to make new goal-oriented alliances among states on both sides of the divide on cohesion policy.