Andrés RODRIGUEZ-POSE

Princesa de Asturias Chair and a professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics. He chaired the European Commission High-Level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy

The EU’s proposed budget overhaul risks turning Cohesion Policy from a shared, democratic development tool into a centralised crisis fund. Cohesion Policy needs reform, but replacing regional voices and long-term investment with national control and sticking-plaster solutions merely responding to media headlines would be a strategic mistake, not modernisation.

Europe’s next seven-year budget, presented by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 16th July, is being sold as a leaner, simpler way to get things done. In reality, the proposal for the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework shifts the centre of gravity from regions to capitals, from partnership to permission, and from long-term development to crisis redeployment. The price will be paid in legitimacy as well as in growth.

Let us begin with a concession. Cohesion Policy needs reform. The rules are too complex, silos persist, and evaluation can be an exercise of mere box-ticking. The EU should simplify procedures, sharpen objectives and align investments with some of the structural challenges it faces. But what is on the table is not reform. It is a new policy that centralises control, loads payments with political conditionality, sidelines regional voices and – at the worst possible moment – risks intensifying the mounting wave of disaffection with European integration.

Under the plan, Cohesion ceases to stand alone. It would be folded into a single ‘National & Regional Partnership Plan’ that also wraps in agriculture, migration, defence and climate. Funds would be managed primarily through national envelopes, with regional and local authorities competing for attention in capital cities. This is not the evolution of an instrument: it is the nationalisation of an idea.

The Commission insists this will ‘strengthen and modernise’ cohesion, ‘with regions at its core’. The likely outcome is a more centralised, more conditional and opaquer regime. Payments would hinge on reform milestones and results-based triggers, with the threat of payment suspension over rule-of-law concerns or other disputes never far away. Predictability – the dull but vital virtue of seven-year programming – would yield to the politics of the moment. A budget designed to drive development across the EU would be repurposed as a flexible war chest for the priority du jour.

That flexibility will be used. The proposal explicitly allows rapid redeployment to ‘geopolitical flashpoints’. Crises are real and must be managed. But roads, skills, research capacity and the many unglamorous investments that build productivity help prevent crises from happening. During the pandemic, the Recovery and Resilience Facility proved its worth as an emergency tool. Its architecture – national plans, central oversight, and minimal citizen input – now threatens to swallow the regular budget.

The timing could hardly be worse. With a third of Europeans opting for Eurosceptic parties, the EU proposes to dilute the one policy that citizens can see and shape locally. Cohesion is where a mayor can point to a bridge, a worker to a training course and a researcher to a lab. Remove its participatory essence and you remove a tangible warrant for belonging. The High-Level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy warned about rising territorial disaffection; this proposal reads like a stress test of that warning.

There is symbolism as well as substance. Centralising territorial policy validates the populist caricature of a remote Brussels that does not listen. The message to the so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ is bleak: the centre knows best. Yet the green and digital transitions will succeed or fail precisely in those places. A Europe of grand strategies with shrinking consent is no recipe for either efficiency or unity.

Defenders call this modernisation: fewer silos, faster delivery and better alignment with Union priorities. The first two aims are worthy; the third is an indictment. Cohesion was never meant to be the cashier for whichever headline dominates. Its mission is to promote development by correcting structural imbalances that markets will not fix and national politics will not always prioritise. Turn it into a conditional annexe to national plans, and the territorial dimension, making a union more than a common market, is eroded.

What would nationalisation look like in practice? Expect tougher bargaining in capitals, where line ministries and governing parties pick winners and losers. Expect less transparency as regional envelopes dissolve into omnibus plans. Expect more short-termism as money chases milestones rather than building capacity. And expect fewer ‘basic development’ projects – local transport, vocational education, business support – that rarely become trending topics but can lift productivity over decades. The cumulative effect would be slower convergence and a deeper sense of neglect and abandonment across many parts of Europe.

There is, however, an alternative that is neither nostalgia nor inertia. The EU can preserve what worked – partnership, multi-level governance, a clear regional voice – while adapting to transition demands. If a single partnership plan is to be the new vessel, it must be given legal teeth. That means mandatory regional operational programmes and ring-fenced territorial envelopes that cannot be quietly reallocated in a ministerial corridor. It also means restoring additionality so EU money complements rather than substitutes national spending.

Traceability should be non-negotiable. Citizens need to see where the money goes and why, project by project, through public regional dashboards. Conditionality, too, should be fit for purpose. Tie conditions to development performance – uptake, outcomes and capability-building – rather than to extraneous bargaining chips. And improve governance: genuine multi-level participation from the start, ex-ante capacity support for weaker administrations, and protected funding for vulnerable territories, which are not always the poorest.

Above all, the European Parliament and Council should insist on a clear legal firewall to prevent most cohesion resources from being siphoned to non-development emergencies except by super-majority and with explicit regional consent. Crises will surely come. However, they should not be financed by raiding the cupboard marked ‘long-term’.

Finally, citizens should be treated as partners, not supplicants. Cohesion and development succeed when power sits close to the ground. For durable reform, Brussels should protect local agency rather than outsource decisions to national ministries.
Europe’s cohesion is the glue that binds all Europeans together and can be the true motor of development and competitiveness, mobilising potential wherever it is found. Replace it with a centralised, conditional, nationalised adjunct, and you may still deliver expenditure. You will not deliver belonging or a better use of funds. The Union often speaks of an ‘ever closer union’. Without a living, participatory territorial development policy, it risks widening the already yawning bridge between Brussels’ elites and EU citizens. And that is no technical tweak, but a strategic mistake.

Photo credits: European Union, 2025