As reported by POLITICO Europe, 17 EU governments sent a letter opposing cuts to agricultural and regional payments in the next seven-year budget.
The document was signed by Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The initiative was coordinated by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan. They will hold an informal meeting of these countries on October 15 and 16 on the sidelines of the next European Council summit.
This concerns the EU’s multiannual financial framework, or MFF, for 2028–2034, which funds, among other things, subsidies for farmers and regional development. In 2025, the European Commission proposed nearly €2 trillion for this period and redirected hundreds of billions of euros from agriculture and cohesion policy to new priorities, including defense and competitiveness. The Irish negotiation document, or negobox, is meant to set the framework for discussions among the 27 EU leaders at the October summit in Brussels.
A group of cohesion policy supporters is also opposed to the cuts: the letter says that further trimming spending would “only weaken the budget and risk undermining public support for the European project”. On the other side, six countries led by Germany again called for cuts of several hundred billion euros across the board.
Among other contentious issues are the EU’s new own resources: the European Commission proposed five new levies, which are estimated to bring in €66 billion a year. In the letter, the 17 countries called these funding sources “genuine, fair, simple, and non-regressive”, and also again proposed postponing payments on post-COVID debt, which is expected to cost €25 billion a year, and opposed budget rebates for wealthier countries. France supports this scheme, but individual governments fear a disproportionate burden, and the EU hopes to agree on a final deal by the end of the year before elections in France, Poland, and Italy complicate the negotiations.
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