In its own words, the Commission tabled ‘a new, modern long-term budget, tightly geared to the political priorities of the Union at 27’. This Policy brief by Jörg Haas, Affiliate Fellow at the Jacques Delors Institut – Berlin, Eulalia Rubio, Senior Research Fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute, and Pola Schneemelcher, Research Fellow at the Jacques Delors Institut – Berlin, analyses how much change and how much continuity the current proposal truly contains and discusses the next steps and possible negotiation dynamics.

Jörg Haas, Eulalia Rubio and Pola Schneemelcher find that:

• The proposal is larger than today’s MFF when comparing nominal and real volumes, but smaller in relation to EU27 Gross National Income (GNI).
• The planned shift of spending from traditional to new policies is bolder than in previous MFF proposals.
• During the negotiations, the traditional coalitions of net recipients and net contributors might splinter in view of new cleavages concerning rebates and eligibility criteria for Cohesion funds.