Regions risk 'paying' European concessions to farmers for Mercosur OK

For Dario Nardella, Democratic Party MEP in the agriculture committee, however, the measure indicated by von der Leyen is 'useful but insufficient': cohesion policy is 'just as important as agriculture' and risks being penalised.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that the promised 45 billion are not additional funds, but already present in the multiannual budget. The second is that, in the MFF proposal under discussion, the resources for agriculture and those for various other budget items are combined in one instrument. They are therefore in competition with each other and will also be so in the mid-term review. Among these items, cohesion policy is the most important one and, therefore, more funds for agriculture now means less funds for cohesion in the middle of the budget cycle.

Nevertheless, Ventola is not pessimistic because, he explains, 'every decision will depend on the concrete needs and priorities that emerge in individual national contexts. True, if the proposal is approved, it will be up to the states to decide, but the deck may be short.

So far, farmers as beneficiaries of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the regions as main implementers of the cohesion policy have stood up against the Commission's MFF proposal. They demand that the two policies remain autonomous. If this were not to happen, their agendas would become very distant and, according to researcher Rubio, today the farmers' 'capacity for pressure and influence' seems 'clearly superior'.

The President of the European Committee of the Regions Kata Tüttő, however, is not worried: "the alliance with the farmers holds" because the new MFF "is a common challenge". Tüttő points out that the EU multiannual budget remains limited, since the proposal under discussion is worth almost two trillion euro, amounting to only 1.26% of the EU gross national income. "This common expenditure was conceived to make the single market work and stabilise it (with the cohesion policy) and to keep European agriculture standing and viable (with the CAP). Today it is more necessary than ever,' he argues.

In his opinion, cohesion policy also serves to deal with the consequences of the EU-Mercosur agreement, because it can support territories with "negative impacts" in a targeted way through "adaptation and diversification". For this reason, Tüttő concludes, it must remain "an autonomous, regional and European policy".