With a focus on the expenditure-side files NRPP, the Performance Framework and Global Europe (including the Ukraine dimension)

 

Author: Johannes Rossbacher 

 

1. Executive summary

On 16 July 2025 the European Commission tabled its proposal for the European Union's next long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the years 2028 to 2034. A first legislative bundle ("Package I") was completed on 3 September 2025 by a second set of sectoral acts ("Package II"). Taken together, these proposals redesign both the size and — more importantly — the architecture of the EU budget more radically than any framework since the introduction of the MFF in 1988.

The Commission proposes total commitments of around €1.76 trillion in constant 2025 prices (frequently described as "almost €2 trillion" once expressed in current prices and once the repayment of NextGenerationEU debt is included). This corresponds to 1.26 % of EU gross national income (GNI), of which 0.11 % (€149.3 billion) is set aside for servicing NextGenerationEU (NGEU) borrowing. Net of that debt repayment, the proposal amounts to about 1.15 % of GNI — only marginally above the 1.13 % of the 2021–2027 framework. The political headline of a much larger budget is therefore driven less by fresh money than by the integration into the MFF of funds that currently sit outside it and by the addition of new own resources on the revenue side.

The proposal rests on three structural pillars that dominate the whole negotiation:

• A radically simplified structure — four headings replace the current seven, some 52 spending programmes are consolidated into roughly 16, and more than 500 regional instruments are folded into 27 National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs), one per Member State.
• A performance- and reform-based delivery model — building on the Recovery and Resilience Facility, disbursement is more systematically tied to milestones, reforms and conditionality, underpinned by a new horizontal Performance Framework Regulation.
• A stronger competitiveness, security and external-action thrust — a new European Competi­tiveness Fund (around €409 billion), a standalone Horizon Europe (€175 billion), and a single Global Europe instrument for external action (€200 billion), with a dedicated Ukraine Reserve of up to €100 billion.

On the revenue side, the EC proposes five new own resources (from the Emissions Trading System, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, non-collected e-waste, a tobacco excise duty resource and a corporate resource, "CORE").

In the Council, negotiations are led by the General Affairs Council (GAC) and have proceeded through a sequence of partial general approaches (PGAs) on individual sectoral files — each deliberately excluding the financial figures and horizontal issues that are reserved for the final overall MFF package — and, in parallel, through a negotiating box steered by the European Council. The Danish Presidency (second half of 2025) built the technical groundwork and produced the first, figure-free negotiating box. The Cypriot Presidency (first half of 2026) moved the file to the political level, secured PGAs on the great majority of expenditure files — including the NRPP, Performance Framework and Global Europe files that are the focus of this note — and on 11 June 2026 presented the first negotiating box with figures, proposing a headline reduction of about 2% (€32.8 billion) against the Commission proposal. The Irish Presidency (second half of 2026, in office since 1 July 2026) has been tasked by the European Council with advancing the negotiating box by the October 2026 European Council (15^th October 2026), with a view to a political agreement by the end of 2026.

The European Parliament, whose consent is required for the MFF Regulation, adopted its interim negotiating position on 28 April 2026, calling for a budget roughly 10% larger than the Commission's.

The Commission presented the core of the package on 16 July 2025 and completed it with additional acts on 3 September 2025. The proposed volume is about €1.763 trillion in commitments (2025 prices), equivalent to roughly €2 trillion in current prices. Expressed as a share of the economy, this is 1.26 % of EU GNI, including 0.11 % (€149.3 billion) reserved for repaying NGEU debt that falls due from 2028. For comparison, the 2021–2027 framework was worth some €1.21 trillion (or 1.13 % of GNI.

Much of the apparent increase reflects two accounting shifts rather than new spending: the incorporation into the MFF of instruments that currently operate outside it (e.g. the Modernisation Fund and the Innovation Fund financed from ETS revenues), and the inclusion of NGEU repayment obligations inside the ceilings. Net of NGEU repayment, the real increase in resources over the current period is modest.

 

The four-heading architecture

The Commission reorganises the budget around four broad headings, replacing the seven headings of the current period:

Heading	Scope	Key instruments
1. National & Regional Partnership Plans	Cohesion, agriculture and rural, fisheries and maritime, social, migration, border management and internal security	NRPP Fund (ERDF/CF/Interreg, ESF+, CAP, EMFAF, AMIF, BMVI, ISF) — one plan per Member State
2. Competitiveness, Prosperity & Security	Research, innovation, industry, digital, connectivity, defence, space, health, education, culture	European Competitiveness Fund; Horizon Europe; CEF; Erasmus+; AgoraEU; EU4Health; defence & space window
3. Global Europe (external action)	Neighbourhood, enlargement, development, humanitarian aid, pre-accession	Global Europe Instrument; Ukraine Reserve (up to €100 bn, above ceilings)
4. European public administration	Staff, pensions, buildings and running costs of the institutions	Administrative appropriations

 

Selected programme envelopes (Commission proposal)

 

Programme / block	Indicative amount	Comment
National & Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs)	~€865 bn	Merges cohesion, CAP, fisheries and home-affairs shared-management funds
European Competitiveness Fund (ECF)	~€409 bn	Consolidates 14 programmes; four windows incl. €131 bn defence & space
Horizon Europe (FP10)	€175 bn	Standalone research & innovation framework programme
Global Europe Instrument	€200 bn	Single external-action instrument
Ukraine Reserve	up to €100 bn	Special instrument above ceilings; ~€14.3 bn per year
NGEU debt repayment	€149.3 bn	0.11 % of GNI, inside the ceilings in the Commission design

 

3. The most important changes compared with previous MFFs

The 2028–2034 proposal is widely regarded as the most far-reaching redesign of the EU budget in decades. Six changes stand out.

 

National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs): from programmes to plans

The single most consequential change is the creation of one National and Regional Partnership Plan per Member State. Instead of separate, EU-level operational programmes for cohesion, agriculture, fisheries and home affairs, each Member State negotiates a single comprehensive plan with the Commission, setting out the investments and reforms it will pursue and covering the whole span of shared-management support. This pools roughly €865 billion — over half of the budget — under one delivery logic.

Supporters argue this simplifies delivery, increases flexibility and links spending more tightly to agreed reforms. Critics — including some Member States, the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee — warn that it risks centralising power in the hands of the Commission and national capitals, sidelining regional authorities and Parliament. The visibility of previously independent policy areas such as the Common Agricultural Policy or Cohesion Policy (and in particular a separate European Social Fund), as well as the emphasis on specific types of regions (rural areas, Eastern Border Regions, etc.), have been contentious points of discussion from the outset.

 

A performance- and reform-based delivery model

The proposal generalises the concept of ‘reform funds’ developed by the Recovery and Resilience Programme (RRF): Payments will be more systematically linked to the achievement of milestones and targets, as well as to conditions from the European Semester, the rule of law framework and other relevant national strategy documents adopted by the EC (the so-called Policy Reference Framework). A dedicated horizontal Performance Framework Regulation underpins this shift by harmonising expenditure tracking, monitoring, reporting and evaluation across all programmes. The approach promises stronger results-orientation. Here too, critics raise questions, such as regarding the administrative burden, transparency, and the accountability gap identified in the RRF. However, the European Commission learned a great deal from the RRF implementation, particularly concerning the last point, and the Performance Framework Regulation was designed accordingly.

 

The European Competitiveness Fund and a sharper competitiveness thrust

Responding to the Draghi and Letta reports, the Commission proposes a new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) of around €409 billion that consolidates 14 existing programmes under a single rulebook and a single gateway for applicants. It concentrates on four areas: clean transition and decarbonisation; digital transition; health, biotech, agriculture and the bioeconomy; and defence and space. The defence and space window alone is set at €131 billion — around five times the current EU-level effort — reflecting the drive towards a European Defence Union. Horizon Europe continues as a distinct €175 billion research flagship, closely linked to the ECF.

 

 

A single Global Europe instrument for external action

On the external side, a single Global Europe instrument of €200 billion absorbs a series of previously separate instruments — NDICI–Global Europe, the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA III), the Moldova and Western Balkans facilities, the Ukraine Facility and humanitarian aid funding. External action would rise to a historic peak of around 11 % of total spending, a real-terms increase of more than 60 % that reflects enlargement, neighbourhood and Ukraine-related needs.

 

Five new own resources (OR)

On the revenue side, the Commission proposes five new own resources intended to finance NGEU repayments and reduce reliance on national GNI contributions:

• ETS-based resource — a share of Emissions Trading System auction revenues;
• CBAM-based resource — a share of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism revenues;
• E-waste resource — based on the amount of electrical and electronic equipment not collected;
• Tobacco Excise Duty Own Resource (TEDOR) — a share of tobacco excise;
• Corporate Resource for Europe (CORE) — a lump-sum contribution from companies tax-resident in the EU with annual net turnover above €100 million, structured as a four-tier bracket system.

Adoption of the OR Decision requires unanimity in the Council, consultation of the Parliament and ratification by all Member States in line with their constitutional requirements — one of the hardest parts of the whole package.

 

More flexibility, more conditionality

Finally, the proposal builds in higher unprogrammed amounts within programmes, larger reserves and cushions, a strengthened single margin instrument and a new crisis-oriented EU Facility, while extending conditionality (including rule-of-law conditionality) across the budget. Flexibility and conditionality are thus the two threads that run through the entire design.

 

4. State of play in the Council

How the Council negotiates: partial general approaches and the negotiating box

Council work runs on two parallel tracks. First, the sectoral (expenditure) files are steered towards partial general approaches (PGAs) in the relevant configurations. A PGA is "partial" because it deliberately leaves out the financial envelopes and the horizontal issues (climate targets, certain governance and conditionality provisions), which are placed in square brackets and settled only with the final MFF package. This lets the Council lock in the substance of each file while preserving the principle that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."

Secondly, the total volume, the breakdown across the individual categories and the revenue side are handled through a negotiating box — a Presidency document that structures the political choices for Heads of State or Government (European Council/EUCO) and will therefore, following the European Council in October 2026, be handed over to the President of the EUCO (Costa) for finalisation at the forthcoming (extraordinary) meetings of the EUCO. Overall coordination sits with the General Affairs Council; the MFF Regulation itself is adopted under the special procedure of Article 312 TFEU, requiring Council unanimity and the consent of the European Parliament, while the sectoral regulations follow the ordinary legislative procedure.

 

Danish Presidency (July–December 2025): building the foundations

The Danish Presidency concentrated on technical groundwork and on framing the political debate. Its central deliverable was the first negotiating box, presented to the European Council on 18–19 December 2025. This first box set out the structure of the budget without figures, organising the framework around the four headings proposed by the Commission and proposing strengthened flexibility (a revised single margin instrument, a flexibility instrument and a new EU Facility), improved performance and climate-spending monitoring, and a firmer rule-of-law framework.

EU leaders took note of the box and called on the incoming Presidencies to take the work forward, aiming for agreement before the end of 2026. On the sectoral files, the Danish Presidency delivered the first two MFF partial approaches: the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF III) and the Single Market and Customs Programme. The December European Council also took the landmark decision to provide a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026–2027 (see Chapter 6).

 

Cypriot Presidency (January–June 2026): from technical to political

The Cypriot Presidency completed the technical work in the first quarter of 2026 and moved negotiations decisively to the political level. Two achievements define its term.

A dense series of partial general approaches. Over the spring the Council adopted PGAs on the large majority of expenditure files, including Erasmus+ and AgoraEU (May), the Justice Programme (5 June), the European Competitiveness Fund, the NRPP Fund and Global Europe (all at the General Affairs Council on 16 June), Horizon Europe and its specific programme (26 June), and the Performance Framework partial mandate (Coreper, 24/26 June). A handful of files — notably the CAP Regulation, the EU school scheme, the Civil Protection Mechanism and, after being held over at AGRIFISH on 22 June, the fisheries file — still lacks a PGA.

The first negotiating box with figures. On 11 June 2026 the Cypriot Presidency circulated a comprehensive negotiating box that, for the first time, attached concrete figures to each heading and programme. It proposed an overall reduction of about 2% (€32.8 billion) to €1,730 billion (2025 prices) relative to the Commission. Crucially, the cuts largely spared Heading 1 (cohesion, CAP and fisheries, set at around €942 billion) and fell instead on Heading 2 (competitiveness) and Heading 3 (external action, with Global Europe trimmed to about €169.5 billion). The box was welcomed by the some 16 southern and eastern "Friends of Cohesion" (including Italy, Spain and Poland) but drew criticism from net contributors such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, which want less spent on cohesion and agriculture and more on competitiveness and defence.

At the European Council of 18–19 June 2026, leaders held their first exchange of views on the box. They did not decide, but tasked the incoming Irish Presidency to advance the work by the October European Council with a view to a timely agreement, and reaffirmed the end-2026 objective.

 

Irish Presidency (July–December 2026): steering towards the endgame

Ireland took over on 1 July 2026 under the motto "Ní neart go cur le chéile" ("Strength with unity"), opening a new trio with Lithuania and Greece. Its programme rests on three pillars — competitiveness, values and security — with the MFF as the overarching priority across all of them. Ireland has committed to protect the Common Agricultural Policy and Cohesion Policy, to advance the negotiating box, and to hand leaders an advanced draft of the Council's position so that they could take the necessary decisions in 2026.

The European Council has set a clear waypoint: the Irish Presidency is to bring the negotiating box to the European Council of 15 October 2026, aiming for a political agreement by the end of the year, since agreement in 2026 is what allows sectoral legislation to be adopted in 2027 and funding to flow from January 2028. Early in the term the Presidency reported to the General Affairs Council of 14 July 2026 on its plan to advance the file, while the Friends of Cohesion coordinated ahead of that meeting. Two questions dominate the endgame: the overall volume of the budget, and the new own resources. Many Member States privately doubt the feasibility of the end-2026 deadline.

 

5. The focus files: NRPP, Performance Framework and Global Europe

The NRPP Regulation (COM(2025) 565)

The NRPP Regulation — formally the Regulation establishing the European Fund for economic, social and territorial cohesion, agriculture and rural, fisheries and maritime, prosperity and security for 2028–2034 — is the umbrella ("chapeau") regulation for all shared-management funds. The Council reached a partial general approach at the General Affairs Council on 16 June 2026 on the compromise text prepared by the Cypriot Presidency, after extensive work in the ad hoc working party and preparatory Coreper discussions.

To secure broad support, the Presidency addressed a set of concerns that many delegations regarded as decisive:

• Governance — it was clarified that the so-called coordinating function managing the NRPPs at national level adds no extra layer; that regional authorities may negotiate regional chapters directly with the Commission where a Member State chooses to implement them; and the Commission's ability to propose modifications to Member States' measures during assessment was removed, Data-collection reporting was eased.
• CAP and fisheries, cohesion visibility, Outermost regions — Highlighting / better profiling of the individual traditional policy areas (cohesion, CAP, fisheries, HOME funds) in the objectives of the Regulation; transfer of a number of CAP-related articles from the NRPP to the CAP Regulation, targeted improvements, including the alignment of the definitions of farmers and rural areas with the CAP Regulation
• Financial rules — clarifications on pay-out values and financial corrections, and full optionality for simplified cost options and financing not linked to costs at beneficiary level.
• Durability — the durability requirement was limited to four years, and home-affairs interventions were excluded from it.
• EU Facility — Annex XV was clarified so that security-related incidents and crises (including those resulting from hostile acts) affecting critical entities or infrastructure can be addressed through the home-affairs actions supported by the EU Facility.

Consistent with the PGA method, financially sensitive provisions were bracketed — notably the Unity Safety Net in Annex XV and the entire Article 20 on national contributions to estimated costs. In the European Parliament the file is handled jointly by the BUDG, REGI and AGRI committees, with rapporteurs Karlo Ressler (EPP), Andrey Novakov (EPP) and Elsi Katainen (Renew).

 

The Performance Framework Regulation (COM (2025) 545)

This horizontal regulation establishes a budget expenditure-tracking and performance framework and common rules for all Union programmes and activities. Following the Budget Committee on 17 June and Coreper on 24 June 2026, the Council agreed a partial mandate for negotiations with the European Parliament on a revised compromise text (document 10768/1/26 REV 1). Its objectives are to make horizontal principles (such as "do no significant harm" and gender equality) consistent across the budget, to streamline and harmonise spending monitoring so that data can be aggregated across programmes, to rationalise performance and funding-opportunity reporting, and to set common rules on evaluation, communication and visibility.

The main Council changes fine-tune definitions to align with the NRPP Regulation, spell out the methodology for the "do no significant harm" guidance (with an implementing act), add flexibilities for shared management, clarify personal-data processing in the light of the European Data Protection Supervisor's opinion, limit the delegated-act empowerments, and introduce a "once-only" reporting principle and biodiversity coefficients, all with a view to reducing administrative burden. As elsewhere, the budgetary and horizontal provisions — the subject matter, the specific climate and environment spending targets in Article 4 and Annex III, and related recitals — were bracketed pending the overall MFF outcome. The file is led jointly in Parliament by the BUDG and CONT committees, with co-rapporteurs Jean-Marc Germain (S&D) and Niclas Herbst (EPP).

 

Global Europe (COM (2025) 567), including the Ukraine dimension

Global Europe replaces a whole family of external instruments with a single regulation carrying an indicative envelope of €200 billion, complemented by a separate Ukraine Reserve of up to €100 billion. It is built around six pillars — Europe; the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf; Sub-Saharan Africa; Asia and the Pacific; the Americas and the Caribbean; and a global pillar — combining programmable geographic programmes with non-programmable components for humanitarian aid, macro-financial assistance, resilience, competitiveness and crisis response, plus an enlarged emerging-challenges cushion.

The Council adopted a partial general approach at the General Affairs Council on 16 June 2026. The main elements of the compromise are:

• Governance — a marked strengthening of the Council's and Member States' role across the whole cycle: annual strategic debates, structured consultations in a "Team Europe" approach, the examination procedure as the default for programming, and a reinforced Global Europe Investment Board.
• Emerging challenges and priorities cushion — tighter Council control, with obligations on the Commission to inform before any mobilisation and to hold exchanges of views at least twice a year, and a narrower set of permissible uses.
• Migration and forced displacement — a balanced approach combining a reinforced "more-for-more" logic with a streamlined suspension mechanism linked to readmission obligations, while preserving overall ODA eligibility for 90 % of expenditure.
• Europe pillar / performance-based plans — a stronger Council steer, including Council implementing acts on framework conditions and, for enlargement partners, approval of positive assessments; and a specifically differentiated approach for Ukraine (see Chapter 6).
• Eligibility and European preference — provisions to promote the participation of European companies and strategic autonomy, calibrated so as not to undermine cooperation with other partners.
• Other elements — a sunset clause aligning the instrument's life with the MFF, a consolidated role for the EIB (including exclusive EIB guarantee envelopes), and eligibility of overseas countries and territories for regional programmes.

In the Parliament the file is examined under a joint AFET–DEVE procedure, with rapporteurs Michael Gahler (EPP, DE) and Robert Biedroń (S&D, PL); adoption of the committees' report is foreseen for 15 October 2026 and a plenary mandate in November 2026.

 

6. Special chapter: Ukraine

Ukraine is, in the words of one analysis, "the elephant in the room" of the next MFF. It shapes the external-action heading, drives much of the flexibility built into the framework, and is the subject of parallel, faster-moving decisions taken outside the ordinary MFF timetable. It is useful to distinguish three layers of EU financial support.

 

6.1  The layers of EU support for Ukraine

Instrument	Period / status	Volume	Nature
Ukraine Facility	2024–2027 (current MFF)	€50 bn	€33 bn loans + €17 bn grants; being absorbed into Global Europe
Ukraine Support Loan	2026–2027	€90 bn	EU market borrowing, backed by budget headroom; repaid only via Russian reparations
Ukraine Reserve	2028–2034 (proposed)	up to €100 bn	Special instrument above ceilings, under Global Europe; ~€14 bn/yr; mainly non-repayable
European Peace Facility	Off-budget	part of ~€30.5 bn	Member-State financed; military support (outside the MFF)

 

6.2 The Ukraine Reserve in the 2028–2034 MFF

The centrepiece for the next period is the Ukraine Reserve, a special instrument under the Global Europe umbrella dedicated chiefly to non-repayable grants and budgetary guarantees. Proposed at up to €100 billion (about €88.8 billion in 2025 prices) for 2028–2034 with an annual ceiling of roughly €14.3 billion, it is financed from the "headroom" between the MFF ceilings and the own-resources ceiling — i.e. above the normal ceilings — precisely because the magnitude and unpredictability of Ukraine's needs cannot be squeezed into a fixed line. It succeeds the €50 billion Ukraine Facility and shifts the balance decisively towards non-repayable support, in order to ease Ukraine's debt burden (its sovereign debt already exceeds 100 % of GDP) and improve fiscal sustainability. The Reserve is designed to cover Ukraine's accession-related reforms and its short-, medium- and long-term recovery and reconstruction needs.

The Cypriot negotiating box of June 2026 left this architecture essentially intact, maintaining continued assistance of up to €88.8 billion financed from the headroom (with an annual ceiling of around €13.5 billion in 2025 prices), plus the possibility of a budgetary guarantee of up to €42.6 billion — with a minimum indicative €12 billion channelled through the European Investment Bank — and an interest-rate subsidy for the Ukraine Support Loan. Additional funding may, if needed, be prioritised from the "Europe: Enlargement and Neighbourhood East" and "Global" pillars and from the emerging-challenges cushion

 

6.3 Governance: a differentiated approach for Ukraine

The Global Europe partial general approach explicitly recognises Ukraine's exceptional situation. Because of the volume of support involved, it provides for a differentiated governance model giving the Council strong steering, including Council implementing acts to establish the fulfilment of payment conditions, together with a dedicated review clause allowing the Commission to propose amendments to the governance arrangements should the situation in Ukraine evolve. This is intended to combine predictability for Kyiv with political control for Member States.

 

6.4 The €90 billion Support Loan

Running ahead of the MFF is the near-term financing of Ukraine for 2026–2027. At the European Council of 18 December 2025, EU leaders agreed to provide a €90 billion loan for those two years, based on EU borrowing on the capital markets backed by the EU budget headroom, to be repaid by Ukraine only once Russia compensates Ukraine for war damage; until then Russia's assets remain immobilised. The mechanism was set up through enhanced cooperation (24 Member States), structured so that any mobilisation of budget resources would not affect the financial obligations of Czechia, Hungary or Slovakia.

The Council finalised the €90 billion Support Loan in the first half of 2026 (adopting the enabling regulations in February and the MFF amendment in April 2026), and the June 2026 European Council looked forward to the first disbursement before the end of June 2026. The IMF has estimated Ukraine's total 2026–2027 financing needs at roughly €135–137 billion, so the €90 billion loan closes only part of the gap and international (G7) contributions remain essential.

 

6.5 Enlargement and reconstruction

Financial support is increasingly tied to Ukraine's accession path. The June 2026 European Council welcomed the holding of the accession Intergovernmental Conference and the opening of the fundamentals cluster on 15 June 2026. For the first time, Ukraine is embedded as a standing beneficiary in the EU's medium-term budgetary architecture, marking a significant step of institutional convergence — even though full membership, and the budgetary revolution it would eventually entail, lies beyond the horizon of this MFF.

The MFF Regulation is adopted under Article 312 TFEU: the Council decides by unanimity after obtaining Parliament's consent (by a majority of component members), while the sectoral regulations are co-decided under the ordinary legislative procedure. Parliament has therefore front-loaded its influence through an interim report that sets its negotiating mandate.

 

Date	Milestone
Early Dec 2025	Co-rapporteurs Siegfried Mureșan (EPP, RO) and Carla Tavares (S&D, PT) issue the draft interim report
15 April 2026	Committee on Budgets (BUDG) adopts the interim report
28 April 2026	Plenary adopts the interim MFF report — 370 in favour, 201 against, 84 abstentions — setting Parliament's mandate
From mid-2026	Parliament ready to negotiate with the Council; consent on the MFF Regulation to follow the political deal

 

In substance, Parliament calls for a significantly more ambitious budget: about 1.27 % of GNI, or €1,789 billion (2025 prices) for programmes, with the €149.3 billion of NGEU debt servicing treated over and above the ceilings — an increase of roughly 10% (€175.1 billion) on the Commission proposal, to be spread across the operational headings. It warns against merging programmes in ways that erode transparency and parliamentary oversight, insists on predictable funding for the common agricultural and cohesion policies, and defends the budget's role as a genuine investment instrument.

On the individual focus files, Parliament's committee timetables (NRPP under BUDG/REGI/AGRI; Performance Framework under BUDG/CONT; Global Europe under AFET/DEVE, with a committee report due around 15 October and a plenary mandate expected in November 2026) are delayed by a few months from the largely completed technical negotiations of the Council but should nevertheless be timely enough to be ready for trilogues once the overall MFF envelope is politically agreed by the EUCO.

 

8. Outlook

What to watch in the second half of 2026

15 October 2026 European Council — the key waypoint at which the Irish Presidency is to present an advanced negotiating box and leaders should narrow the gaps on volume, structure and revenue.

• New own resources — the hardest nut: unanimity plus national ratification, with net contributors resisting the corporate resource (CORE) and any diversion of ETS/CBAM revenues, and some leaders (e.g. France, Greece) floating new common borrowing.
• The NRPP model — by adopting the Partial General Approach, the Council has effectively accepted the model. It is highly unlikely that Parliament will be able to overturn the model against the will of the Council and the Commission – the key factor will be what minor concessions are still made to Parliament.
• Ukraine — progress (or not) on the longer-term reparations-loan design, and the interaction between near-term 2026–2027 financing and the 2028–2034 Ukraine Reserve.
• The deadline itself — a deal by end-2026 is needed for sectoral acts in 2027 and uninterrupted funding from January 2028; slippage is widely regarded as possible.

 

Annex — State of play on the focus files

File	COM no.	Procedure	Council state of play
MFF Regulation	COM (2025) 571	Art. 312 TFEU (unanimity + EP consent)	Negotiating box with figures (11 June 2026); target: political deal end-2026
Performance Framework	COM (2025) 545	2025/0545 (COD)	Partial mandate for EP negotiations — Coreper, 24/26 June 2026
NRPP Fund	COM (2025) 565	2025/0240 (COD)	Partial general approach — GAC, 16 June 2026
Global Europe	COM (2025) 567	2025/0227 (COD)	Partial general approach — GAC, 16 June 2026
European Competitiveness Fund	COM (2025) 555	2025/0555 (COD)	Partial general approach — GAC, 16 June 2026
Horizon Europe	COM (2025) 543	2025/0543 (COD)	Partial general approach — TTE, 26 June 2026
Own Resources Decision	COM (2025) 574	CNS (unanimity + ratification)	No partial approach yet

 

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This article has been prepared by Johannes Rossbacher, in supporting U-LEAD in providing expert analysis of the Regional Development Policy in the context of Ukraine’s support needs in meeting the recommendations of the European Commission under Ukraine Enlargement Reports concerning Chapter 22 Regional Policy and Coordination of Structural Instruments.

U-LEAD with Europe: Local Empowerment, Accountability and Development Programme is a multi-donor action of the EU and its member states Germany, Denmark, France, Austria, Poland and Slovenia to support Ukraine on its path to strengthening local self-government.
U-LEAD promotes transparent, accountable, resilient and responsive multi-level governance in Ukraine and empowers municipalities.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of its authors and do not necessarily represent the views of U-LEAD with Europe, the European Union and its member states Germany, Denmark, France, Austria, Poland and Slovenia.

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Johannes Rossbacher an Austrian senior public administration expert with long-standing professional experience in EU Cohesion Policy, regional development, and spatial planning, holding a unique position in the coordination of European and national regional policy frameworks. Over more than three decades, he has represented Austria at EU level and played a central role in shaping and negotiating Cohesion Policy packages, including during Austria’s EU Council Presidencies. His career combines strategic policy coordination, programme management, and international advisory work, including long-term expert assignments supporting structural funds preparation in EU Member States.