Seventeen EU leaders oppose cuts to agriculture and cohesion in 2028–2034 budget

Coalition letter to EU leadership

On 2 October 2026, seventeen European Union member states sent a joint letter to Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin and European Council President António Costa to oppose planned reductions in cohesion and agricultural spending. The initiative was coordinated by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan under the Friends of Cohesion group. The seventeen signatories include Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. They maintain that preserving the Common Agricultural Policy and regional cohesion funding is necessary to protect public support for the European project. Ireland currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU and is preparing a compromise negotiation draft for the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework.

In the joint text, the leaders emphasised that traditional funding objectives remain fundamental to economic convergence across member nations.

This is not the moment for Europe to reduce ambition. The cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are long-standing policies, but their objectives remain as relevant as ever. They promote convergence between Member States and regions, reinforce the single market and support rural areas and less developed regions.

Competing visions for the multiannual budget

The push from the seventeen leaders follows an initial proposal presented by the European Commission in July 2025 for a budget totaling nearly €2 trillion for the 2028–2034 period. That proposal shifted hundreds of billions of euros away from agriculture and regional development payouts to fund emerging priorities such as defense and competitiveness. Signatories to Friday's letter noted that cohesion and agriculture had already absorbed cuts in real terms under that initial draft, despite an overall increase in the total financial framework.

The letter firmly rejected deeper reductions to these two spending pillars.

We therefore believe that the overall funding for Cohesion Policy and the CAP must be preserved in the next MFF.

This position sets up a direct confrontation with a rival group of six countries led by Germany. Earlier in the week of 2 October 2026, that six-nation bloc sent its own joint letter calling for across-the-board spending cuts totaling several hundred billion euros.

Revenue negotiations and upcoming summit

Addressing the need to fund newer European priorities like defense and industrial competitiveness, the seventeen leaders argued that such programs should rely on adequate additional resources rather than transfers from regional development. They expressed willingness to negotiate on the revenue side through new own resources for the EU budget, provided that any new mechanisms remain fair, simple, and non-regressive. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro joined Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan among the signatories backing this revenue approach.

The coalition warned that diverting funds away from agriculture and regional development would harm the union.

Their further reduction would not lead to modernisation of the EU budget; it would only weaken it and could undermine public support for the European project.

The budgetary dispute now moves to Brussels, where EU leaders will gather for the European Council summit on 15 and 16 October 2026. Dublin is preparing a revised negotiating document, known as a negobox, to steer discussions among all 27 member states. Meloni and Dan confirmed they will convene an informal meeting of the seventeen Friends of Cohesion leaders on the margins of that summit to coordinate their joint negotiating stance.