Speaking to reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, Serafin presented the European Commission’s proposal for the 2028–2034 EU budget, amounting to EUR 2 trillion.
The plan earmarks EUR 300 billion for agriculture, EUR 451 billion for the new Competitiveness Fund, and EUR 218 billion for less-developed regions.
According to unofficial information cited by Polish state news agency PAP, Poland is expected to receive more than EUR 100 billion through the cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy.
The Commission’s proposal now enters the negotiation phase and requires unanimous approval from all 27 member states.
Serafin told reporters that for Poland, the two most important areas of the new budget are cohesion and agriculture.
“These funds will be part of national and regional partnership programs. Poland, although it has developed rapidly in recent years—and is expected to continue doing so—will remain the biggest beneficiary of these programs,” he said.
The proposed structure reflects the European Commission’s goal of reducing bureaucracy and overlapping expenditures.
National programs would cover areas such as rural development, food security, social policy, fisheries, migration, border management, and internal security. These national allocations would form the largest share of the budget, with EUR 865 billion, nearly half of the total.
Serafin also confirmed that direct payments to farmers would be maintained at current levels, addressing concerns from agricultural sectors across Europe.
He stressed that one of the budget’s core assumptions is to avoid increasing national contributions. Instead, the Commission is pushing to expand the EU’s own sources of revenue, although Serafin welcomed the fact that revenues from the EU’s second emissions trading system (ETS2) would not be included among them.
A major innovation in the proposal is the EUR 410 billion Competitiveness Fund, designed to support the EU’s industrial sovereignty and strategic technologies. This includes a doubling of the Horizon Europe research and innovation program, a fivefold increase in digitization investment, and a sixfold increase in spending on clean energy, the bioeconomy, and decarbonization.
The fund will also support defense and space industries, with EUR 131 billion set aside for these sectors, which is five times more than in the current financial framework.
Serafin noted that the biggest weakness of the current EU budget is its lack of flexibility.
“There are no instruments, no money to respond to changing priorities or crises, and we can see the kind of world we are living in today. Flexibility must be increased,” he said.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP