Commissioner Oettinger travels to Prague to talk about the EU’s next seven-year budget

European Commissioner in charge of budget and human resources, Günther H. Oettinger, will be in Prague, Czechia, on 5 November 2019 to take part in the high-level meeting of the ‘Friends of Cohesion’. During a plenary discussion with Prime Ministers and Ministers from 17 Member States, he will deliver a speech focused on the EU’s next long-term budget and the role of Cohesion Policy in it. Ahead of his participation, Commissioner Oettinger said: “Cohesion Policy – EU’s main investment policy – has been and will remain an important part of the EU’s spending. At the same time, our next long-term budget needs to be modernised to be fit for the challenges that Europe is currently facing. That was the spirit of the Commission proposal from the spring of 2018. What we need now is a swift agreement so that Cohesion Policy and other EU programmes start working and delivering results for the EU citizens in a timely manner, avoiding the delays from the beginning of the current perspective. We have no time to lose. It is time to decide.” On 2 May 2018, the Commission put forward a proposal for a fair, balanced and modern budget to deliver on Europe’s priorities as set out by Leaders in Bratislava in 2016 and in Rome in 2017. That proposal was immediately followed by legislative proposals for the 37 sectoral programmes forming part of the future long-term budget, including the one on Cohesion Policy. Since then, the Commission has worked hand in hand with the rotating Presidencies of the Council, and in close collaboration with the European Parliament, to take the negotiations forward in view of a timely agreement. The Commission is convinced that a quick agreement is essential, for the hundreds of thousands of students, farmers and researchers across Europe, as well as everybody else who benefits from the EU budget.