By radically changing the rules, the Commission wants to address “strategic dependencies” on foreign countries and boost the kind of pan-European industrial revival championed by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi in his landmark competitiveness report.
The third and fourth pillars focus on enlargement and funding to foreign countries, and personnel costs, but there are few details on what could change in the near future.
Overall, this model marks a dramatic shift from the EU’s current practice of funding local regions or national governments with fewer strings attached.
“The Draghi report is setting the narrative for a power grab,” said a second EU official.
Critics accuse von der Leyen of assuming an outsized role in the way the EU distributes cash at the detriment of local bodies and other Commission departments.
In a further hint at centralization, the document envisages an ad hoc steering group that will handle the budget process. This will be made up by von der Leyen, the budget department and the Secretariat General, which operates under the president’s direct authority. Vice presidents and other departments can be involved as mere “guests.”
Detractors of this approach suggest that it sucks power away from Directorates General (DGs) — the Brussels version of ministries — that have often been seen as more pliable to sectoral interests. For instance, the agriculture department was accused of defending automatic payments to farmers regardless of their efforts to go green, while the regional department was seen by critics as being too focused on the local — as opposed to the EU-wide — dimension.
More than 130 regions criticized the Commission’s idea of setting up a plan for each country in an open letter recently.