New budget, but old beneficiary. Serafin: Poland will benefit the most

EU Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin announced on Wednesday that Poland, despite its rapid growth in recent years, will remain the largest beneficiary of national programs in the next multiannual European Union budget. This primarily concerns cohesion policy and agriculture.

On Wednesday in Brussels, Serafin presented a proposed EU budget of €2 trillion for 2028-2034. The proposal includes €300 billion for agriculture, €451 billion for the Competitiveness Fund, and €218 billion for less developed regions.

According to unofficial information from the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Poland is to receive over EUR 100 billion from the cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy in the new EU budget.

In an interview with the media on Wednesday, Serafin stressed that from Poland's point of view, cohesion and agriculture will be the most important aspects of the future EU budget.

"These funds will be allocated to national and regional partnership programs. Poland, despite its rapid growth in recent years—and the growth forecasts for the coming years suggest otherwise—will remain the largest beneficiary of these national and regional partnership programs," he said.

He added that for the budget to come into force, an agreement must be reached, including on how to finance it. "Therefore, we propose a radical increase in EU budget resources other than national contributions," he said.

He welcomed the fact that this package of new own resources did not include revenues from the ETS2 emissions trading system.

He announced that in the future EU budget direct payments to farmers will be maintained at the current level.

He also said that one of the basic assumptions of the budget proposal is that member states will not have to increase their national contributions to the budget.

- We place emphasis on other potential resources of the European Union budget - he stressed.

In a media interview, Serafin said the EU budget's current main problem is its lack of flexibility. "It's a lack of instruments, a lack of money to respond to changing priorities or crisis situations, and we see the world we live in today. Flexibility must be increased," he concluded.

According to European Commission materials shown to journalists on Wednesday, the national plans would cover rural development, food security, cohesion policy, social policy, fisheries and coastal areas, migration, border management, and internal security. The EC argues that combining them will reduce bureaucracy and duplication of spending.

National plans constitute the largest part of the budget – €865 billion (48% of €2 trillion), of which €300 billion will go to agriculture and €218 billion to support weaker regions.

The remaining funds are divided as follows: 23% for the Competitiveness Fund, 11% for Europe's global actions, 3% for the Erasmus+ educational programmes and the new Agora-EU civil society support programme, and 16% for other expenditure.

The €410 billion Competitiveness Fund is intended to support strategic technologies and the EU's industrial sovereignty. It includes, among other things, a doubling of the budget for the Horizon Europe science and innovation program, a five-fold increase in investment in digitalization, and a six-fold increase in spending on clean energy, the bioeconomy, and decarbonization.

The Competitiveness Fund will also include spending on defence and space, for which €131 billion has been allocated, i.e. five times more than in the current financial framework.

Łukasz Osiński from Brussels (PAP)

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