In a joint letter sent on Friday to European Council President António Costa and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, the leaders said spending on cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy should not be reduced in the EU budget for 2028-2034.
Ireland, which holds the rotating EU presidency in the second half of this year, is finalising preparations for a compromise draft of the budget.
The signatories said the two traditional EU policies had already faced real-terms cuts in the European Commission's initial budget proposal, presented in July last year, despite an overall increase in the size of the seven-year financial framework, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
The leaders warned that further reductions to agricultural and cohesion "would only weaken" Europe's budget and "risk undermining public support for the European project."
The letter was signed by the leaders of Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Spain, Romania, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia.
The countries make up the informal Friends of Cohesion group.
The leaders acknowledged that the EU faces growing challenges in defence, competitiveness and energy security. But they said addressing those priorities should not come at the expense of policies enshrined in the EU treaties that remain central to European integration.
The group wants funding for regional development and agriculture in the next EU budget to be preserved at the levels proposed by Cyprus, which held the EU presidency in the first half of this year.
Cyprus proposed in June increasing cohesion policy funding by EUR 5 billion in a compromise draft, according to the Polish state news agency.
Overall, however, it said the Cypriot proposal would have reduced the budget by 2 percent, with the largest cuts affecting the Competitiveness Fund and the Horizon research and development programme.
The Cypriot proposal was rejected by countries calling for deeper cuts, including Germany.
Berlin also stepped up its campaign for budget reductions this week. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the leaders of Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden said they were seeking cuts of several hundred billion euros in the EU's 2028-2034 budget.
The 17 leaders said Europe's new priorities would require additional funding and expressed willingness to discuss increasing EU revenues, including proposals for new sources of EU revenue that would reduce direct pressure on national budgets.
They said, however, that any new sources of revenue should be fair and non-regressive.
Poland opposes a proposal to transfer revenue from the sale of emissions allowances under the EU's Emissions Trading System from national budgets to the EU budget, arguing that it would disproportionately affect poorer member states.
The EU's seven-year budget requires unanimous approval by the bloc's leaders and is expected to be agreed by the end of this year.
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Source: IAR/PAP, politico.eu