Policy Brief: Public investment in the proposed 2028-2034 EU budget

Does the EU budget provide sufficient public investment for digitalisation, the just transition, geoeconomic resilience and defence to prevent rising costs from threatening fiscal sustainability in the future? In a new policy brief by FEPS and FES, authors Cédric Koch and Dominika Biegon analyse the Commission’s proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 to assess its ability to address the EU’s current and future challenges. 

The authors conclude that the current MFF proposal is far from ambitious, despite what the European Commission opts to communicate, and largely just offsets inflation and the repayment of Next Generation EU (NGEU) bonds.

To amend this and other shortfalls, the study proposes three reform avenues to strengthen public investment:

1. EU fiscal rules must be reformed to be friendlier to national investment.
2. Own resources must be ambitiously expanded to fund more EU-level investment.
3. National escape clauses need to be used in order to unlock off-budget loan instruments.

Take a look at the in-depth study to learn more about the ways the next EU budget can be optimised to better match the Union’s long-term needs.