August 9, 2026

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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Regions Demand a Veto Over Europe’s New Cohesion Policy Funds

Angelo Ogbonna
Institutional Affairs Reporter, Cohesion and Regional Policy

Brussels: Europe’s regions demanded a power to veto national spending plans that ignore local needs, sharpening a fight over the future of cohesion policy as the Commission redraws the EU budget for 2028 to 2034. The European Committee of the Regions adopted a batch of opinions this year warning that centralisation threatens the policy’s purpose.

The clash flows from the Commission’s plan to merge cohesion funds, farm payments and other programmes into a single pot delivered through National and Regional Partnership Plans. Governments would negotiate those plans directly with Brussels, with money tied to reforms, echoing the model of the pandemic recovery fund.

Cohesion policy has long channelled roughly a third of the EU budget toward poorer regions, financing roads, rail, research and small businesses. Regional leaders fear the merger hands too much control to national capitals and sidelines the mayors and regional presidents who know where investment actually lands.

In February 2026, the Committee of the Regions’ territorial cohesion body adopted draft opinions on the proposal, part of a planned series of around twenty assessments of the next long-term budget. Members called for a binding governance check obliging governments to involve subnational authorities when they design their plans.

They went further, asking to be empowered to request that the Commission reject any national plan that shuts regions out. Local and regional leaders set out that demand directly, framing it as a defence of the partnership principle and multi-level governance.

Money worries compound the governance dispute. Analysts expect cohesion and farm spending together to fall below 40 percent of the budget in the new period, a real cut for regions already stretched by energy costs and industrial change. Eastern and southern member states, the biggest recipients, watch the numbers closely.

Supporters of the overhaul point to a familiar complaint, that traditional cohesion funding moves slowly and leaves billions unspent at the end of each cycle. By linking payments to milestones, the Commission argues, it can push reforms and speed delivery. Critics reply that the recovery-fund template rewards central governments and offers regions little say once national targets are locked in.

The Commission argues that simpler, performance-linked plans will spend money faster and target reforms better, and it has floated regional checks to reassure critics. Its case for change sits in the future cohesion policy pages. Parliament, meanwhile, has begun its own scrutiny of the partnership plans.

With the budget due to be agreed by the end of 2027, the coming months will decide whether cohesion policy stays a genuinely regional instrument or becomes another line item negotiated over the heads of the places it is meant to serve.

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