The European Commission’s proposals for the 2028–34 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) pose the most far-reaching challenge to Cohesion Policy since its creation. The proposals divert significant resources towards competitiveness, defence, resilience, and external action, and reshape governance by assigning national governments responsibility for National and Regional Partnership Plans, linking funding more closely to reforms and introducing performance-based payments.
The reform debate must be viewed in context. Over 2024–25, Member States, the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, and networks such as the CPMR mobilised strongly to defend Cohesion Policy in response to leaked proposals. The Polish EU Council Presidency, in particular, sought to reassert the territorial and redistributive role of cohesion, stressing its contribution to convergence, resilience, and EU legitimacy. While lobbying secured partial safeguards, including minimum spending on less-developed regions and skills, these were last-minute concessions, overshadowed by more centralising reform proposals.
Member State positions on the budget are divided. Net beneficiary countries support a larger MFF, while net contributors resist any increase. Most Member States rejected merging Cohesion and CAP into national envelopes, but views were more divided on conditionality linking payments to reforms. Despite opposition to cohesion and CAP cuts by many Member States and the European Parliament, the budget arithmetic of new priorities and repayments of NGEU implies downward pressure. While evaluations show positive socio-economic effects of Cohesion Policy overall, especially for employment and investment, the impacts vary widely across regions, and there is evidence of increasing intra-regional disparities. The Mid-Term-Review diverted resources towards short-term priorities such as defence and energy resilience, accentuating concerns about mission drift.
Beyond the financial debate, the reform represents a decisive shift in governance and delivery of Cohesion Policy. By replacing the current programme-based system with NRPPs under a single umbrella fund, the Commission proposal moves towards a national architecture in which regional chapters are only optional. This raises concerns that, despite references to partnership in the legal texts, multi-level governance could be weakened and subnational actors marginalised, as was the case under the RRF.
At the same time, the delivery model is reoriented around performance. Payments would be tied to milestones and targets linked to investments and reforms, supported by higher pre-financing, a stricter N+1 decommitment rule, and potentially a reinforced single-audit approach. While these innovations aim at simplification and faster disbursement, they also create new uncertainties over how milestones are defined and verified, how results versus outputs and costs are weighted and assessed, and how shortfalls will be sanctioned.
The paper concludes that Cohesion Policy is now at a critical juncture. The Commission’s proposals place the policy ‘on the rocks’, raising the risk that it becomes a conditional investment tool aligned with EU-wide reforms rather than a long-term place-based strategy for balanced and integrated territorial development anchored in multilevel governance. The outcome of negotiations over the next two years will determine whether Cohesion Policy can be steered in a different direction, reaffirming its core purpose of reducing disparities, or whether it risks centralisation, fragmentation and an erosion of its place-based and redistributive logic in the pursuit of other EU priorities.