EU Parliament pushes to keep farm, regional funds separate

The European Parliament wants the European Commission to amend its proposal for the EU 2028-2034 budget to restore separate financing streams for farmers and for regional aid. Siegfried Muresan, who is one of the parliament’s two budget negotiators, told that unless the Commission amended its July proposal that merged the two financing streams into one pool of money, the parliament would reject it. “We want these policies to be preserved as standalone policies with a clear legislative base, with European objectives, with distinct budgets,” Muresan said. The EU has been spending roughly a third of its 1.2 trillion euro ($1.4 trillion) budget on the common agriculture policy to support farmers and another third on cohesion policy to equalise standards of living of the various regions of the 27-nation bloc. To give governments more flexibility as priorities change, the Commission proposed for the first time that in 2028-2034 the two pots should become one, with spending at the ...