More flexible European Union spending needs stronger parliamentary scrutiny

Proposed changes to the EU budget and how it is approved go too far in marginalising the European Parliament; this shortcoming should be corrected.

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) gives the European Parliament significant powers in relation to the European Union’s budget. The EU’s overall seven-year budget – the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) – cannot pass without the parliament’s consent, while the parliament acts as co-legislator alongside the Council of the EU in the annual budgetary procedure. Together with the Council, the parliament thus has the authority to determine how EU funds are allocated.

However, the European Commission’s proposal for the 2028-2034 MFF foresees a new architecture for the EU budget, which would exclude the European Parliament from significant allocation decisions and limit its scrutiny powers during implementation. This is problematic not only from a treaty perspective, but also because the parliament, as the EU’s democratically elected institution, should help ensure that EU spending serves EU priorities.

The Commission’s proposals would give national governments a greater role in allocating EU funds across priorities. Governments may be tempted to use these funds to pursue domestic objectives, which might not necessarily coincide with European priorities. Given that the EU budget accounts for little more than one percent of GDP, compared with public expenditure of around 45 percent of GDP at national level, it is essential that EU spending remains focused on common European priorities.

In Darvas et al (2026), we concluded that the European Parliament should not be excluded from major decisions on the allocation of EU funds. Here, we explore options for involving the European Parliament in the proposed new EU budget architecture, while respecting the Treaty-based roles of the parliament, the Council and the Commission. In particular, a reasonable balance should be struck between ensuring meaningful European Parliament involvement and avoiding unnecessary delays in the budgetary process. While implementing the full set of options proposed in this analysis would be desirable, the objective is to ensure meaningful European Parliament involvement at the various stages of the budgeting and monitoring process. 

The European Parliament’s limited role in the proposed MFF architecture

In July 2025, the European Commission proposed a major overhaul for the 2028-2034 MFF: reducing the number of budgetary headings and programmes, harmonising EU budget rules, extending flexibility and strengthening performance assessments. The largest amount of spending would be organised under National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs); cohesion, agriculture, fisheries, social, migration, border and internal security spending would be integrated into a single framework, within nationally pre-allocated envelopes (European Commission, 2025).

For the purposes of NRPPs, specific amounts would be earmarked for certain cohesion, agricultural and migration and border management spending. However, almost one-third of total spending via NRPPs would be allocated by EU countries without European Parliament involvement. Moreover, a 25 percent flexibility amount would be left for reprogramming in case of emergency or in the mid-term review, also without European Parliament involvement. Consequently, many substantive allocation decisions that under previous MFFs were more tightly constrained into separate programmes and budgetary structures would shift to the programming and implementation stages, in which the parliament’s role is much more limited.

The NRPPs would be subject to performance-based budgeting, under which disbursements would be conditional on the achievement of specified milestones and targets, rather than on the actual costs incurred. In principle, this approach has considerable advantages (Darvas et al, 2023), but experience with national plans under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) – the main part of the EU’s post-pandemic economic recovery programme – showed significant shortcomings in putting performance-based financing into practice (Darvas et al, 2023; ECA, 2023, 2025; Leino-Sandberg, 2026). While the Commission’s proposed performance framework for 2028-2034 would improve on the RRF framework, its methodology for setting milestones and targets remains insufficiently developed.

Under the proposals for 2028-2034, the European Parliament would have no role in approving or amending individual NRPPs, even though these plans would shape how EU funding is ultimately prioritised and spent. Nor would it have a role in the financial decisions setting out milestones, targets and payout values. Potentially, this would not adequately safeguard the European Parliament’s budgetary prerogatives under the Treaties.

One possible, albeit far-reaching, solution would be to make the European Parliament a co-adopter, together with the Council, of the EU acts that must be adopted to approve each national plan, with these acts also incorporating the relevant financial decisions. This could involve either approval of each plan individually or a joint approval process covering all plans. Major revisions to plans could be subject to similar scrutiny.

However, the European Parliament is not an implementing authority under the EU Treaties and lacks the administrative capacity to scrutinise every national plan in detail. Alternative mechanisms should therefore be considered to safeguard the parliament’s budgetary prerogatives. Instead, we recommend a combination of stronger ex-ante parliamentary influence over major choices concerning spending priorities and financial allocations, scrutiny of major plan amendments, better information access and independent evaluation.

Strengthening the European Parliament’s role before NRPP adoption

Under the Commission’s proposals for 2028-2034, EU countries would have considerable discretion in allocating funding across priorities. Discussions and negotiations between each country and the Commission could significantly influence how EU funding is allocated across EU priorities, while the European Parliament would be excluded from these decisions. This could be addressed by:

• Specifying minimum and maximum shares of funding for major EU objectives that each NRPP should respect; this would ensure that overall spending on priorities remains within the boundaries set by the European Parliament.
• Clarifying what it means for NRPPs to “effectively address all or a significant subset” of relevant recommendations related to EU policies (including fiscal, environmental, agricultural and migration policies listed in European Commission (2025)), in order to limit the scope for interpretation in bilateral Commission-country discussions.
• Requiring the Commission to aggregate the funding allocations in all draft NRPPs and assess how the 27 plans collectively contribute to spending areas; this would allow the European Parliament to assess whether the planned allocations are in line with EU priorities. Particular attention should be paid to cross-border projects, which are crucial for European added value, but were largely neglected in national plans under the RRF despite being well suited for RRF financing (ECA, 2022).

This aggregate assessment should take place sufficiently early to allow the findings to be taken into account in final NRPPs. For example, EU countries could be required to submit draft plans at least six months before the deadline for final plans. The Commission would then have one month to assess the aggregate allocations, followed by one month for the European Parliament to express its views. This would leave EU countries and the Commission four months to discuss and incorporate possible revisions before the final plans are submitted. The parliament’s opinion might not be binding, but the Commission should be required to explain how the parliament’s observations were taken into account in the finalisation of NRPPs.

Under the Commission’s 2028-2034 MFF proposals, the Commission would assess the (final) NRPPs and propose Council sign-off decisions (‘implementing decisions’ in EU jargon), with no option for the European Parliament to intervene at any procedural stage. This process could be strengthened by:

• Requiring the Commission to transmit to the parliament before formally submitting a proposal for a Council decision its preliminary assessment of each final NRPP, including a summary of the Commission’s exchanges with the country concerned and the proposed milestones, targets and payout values. The parliament could then be given, for example, one month to provide a non-binding opinion. The Commission should be required to explain how it has taken the parliament’s opinion into account before submitting its proposal to the Council. The Council sign-off decision should include the milestones, targets and payout values.

In scrutinising NRPPs, the European Parliament would also benefit from independent assessments of the NRRPs, the Commission’s assessments of NRRPs and the results achieved (Darvas et al, 2026). The Commission’s close involvement in the design and implementation of NRPPs could compromise its ability to provide fully objective assessments, as was the case with the RRF (Darvas et al, 2025). Independent scrutiny could be provided by an Independent NRPP Evaluation Panel, selected through a competitive process and insulated from both national managing authorities and the Commission services responsible for NRPP implementation. The panel would complement, rather than duplicate, the work of the European Court of Auditors (ECA), by providing systematic assessments of NRPP design, implementation and results, while ECA would retain its independent external audit and evaluation functions. We therefore recommend:

• Establish an Independent NRPP Evaluation Panel whose assessments would be made public, providing additional evidence for parliamentary scrutiny.

The Council may reject a draft NRPP approval proposed by the Commission. This should trigger the same procedure as for the initial plan:

• When the Council rejects a proposed NRPP sign-off decision and the Commission submits a new draft decision, potentially after the country concerned has revised its NRPP, the European Parliament should again be able to express its opinion.

Strengthening the European Parliament’s role during NRPP implementation

The Commission’s proposal would allow the European Parliament only a very limited role during implementation of the NRPPs. The parliament would be able to object to Commission decisions on revising six articles and five annexes of the NRPP regulation (European Commission, 2025), or to revoke the Commission’s power to adopt such decisions. The Commission would also be required to communicate information on irregularities to the parliament. However, the parliament would have no role in other implementation-related dialogues, or in the programming of the 25 percent flexibility amount. Moreover, there would be no regular implementation dialogue between the Commission and the parliament, though a comparable mechanism – the ‘recovery and resilience dialogue’ – is in place for the RRF. At the time of writing, 23 such RRF dialogues have been held (Loi et al, 2026). These shortcomings in monitoring of implementation could be addressed by:

• Setting rules constraining transfers between fundamentally different policy objectives during implementation. This would limit the scope for substantial changes in spending priorities without parliamentary involvement.
• Establishing a regular NRPP scrutiny dialogue between the European Parliament and the Commission. At regular intervals, for example every six or twelve months, the Commission should prepare an NRPP implementation report and present it to the parliament. The report would cover payments, suspensions and corrective decisions; amendments to NRPPs; programming of the crisis and mid-term review components of the flexibility amount; conclusions of national monitoring committees; audit findings and remedial actions; and cross-country comparison of implementation. Following each dialogue, the parliament could submit written observations to which the Commission would be required to respond.
• Major amendments to plans and the intended programming of the flexibility amount ahead of the mid-term review should be subject to prior European Parliament scrutiny, similarly to the scrutiny we propose for initial NRPPs. The parliament should be able to provide opinions on aggregate reallocations, particularly if several EU countries amend their plans at the same time, and on major amendments to individual plans. The Commission should be required to reply to the parliament’s observations.
• Material reprogramming should be approved through the annual budgetary procedure. ‘Material reprogramming’ could be defined on the basis of quantitative thresholds relating to the share of a country’s allocation affected, transfers between substantially different policy objectives and use of the flexibility amount above a specified threshold. This would ensure that the Parliament’s Treaty role as a co-budgetary authority would be safeguarded in relation to significant changes to spending priorities.
• Linking NRPP implementation to the European Parliament’s annual budget and discharge procedures. The Commission proposed to prepare an annual NRPP implementation report, which is welcome, but its publication should be sufficiently ahead of the annual budgetary and discharge cycles. This would embed NRPP accountability into existing parliamentary procedures, rather than creating a parallel, stand-alone system disconnected from two of the parliament’s strongest instruments: its annual budgetary authority and discharge powers. The implementation report should include country-by-country and policy-by-policy information, without becoming overwhelming for lawmakers.
• Enshrining greater transparency and information rights, as requested by the parliament in relation to control, transparency and traceability of performance-based instruments. The Commission should be required to provide the parliament, in a timely manner, with all relevant Commission assessments (including assessments of the fulfilment of milestones and targets), national reports, audit summaries and information on recovery actions. Parliament’s right to submit questions and request additional information should be guaranteed.
• Ensuring timely access for the parliament to materials produced by national monitoring committees, including meeting minutes, decisions and recommendations. Such access would give European Parliament lawmakers a more direct view of implementation challenges and stakeholder concerns at national and regional levels.

Conclusion

The NRPP framework as proposed by the European Commission would shift important decisions on EU spending from the legislative stage to the programming and implementation stages, in which the European Parliament would have only a limited role. Combined with the lack of clarity around the proposed performance-based budgeting framework, this shift could undermine the European Parliament’s budgetary prerogatives under the Treaties.

Making the parliament a co-adopter of every NRPP would, however, be difficult to reconcile with the respective institutional roles of the EU institutions and would impose substantial administrative demands on the parliament. A more workable approach would therefore be to strengthen parliamentary influence and scrutiny at several critical points without turning the parliament into an implementing authority. Prior scrutiny of aggregate and national allocations, systematic access to Commission and national documentation, independent evaluation, a regular NRPP dialogue, scrutiny of major plan amendments, integration into the annual budget and discharge procedures and parliamentary approval of material reprogramming through the annual budget would together provide a stronger accountability framework.

Source : Bruegel