The eastward enlargement of the EU will be a challenge for Portugal, especially because of the potential changes it will have on cohesion funds, Finance Minister Fernando Medina said at a conference in Lisbon on Wednesday.
Medina spoke at the annual congress of the Association of Economists on “Portugal and the challenges of the present: the role of economists and managers” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
“We have to start preparing for what the country’s future will be in the context of post-enlargement of the European Union,” he said, defending the importance of the creation of the fund for structuring investment after 2026, announced during the presentation of the 2024 budget.
For Medina, this “is one of the main challenges on which the country has not given sufficient and in-depth thought” in the face of an “enlargement process which, if it materialises sooner than other enlargement processes, will change the map of the European Union in a very significant way”.
“From geopolitical issues, where an eastward enlargement will naturally strengthen the eastward tilt of the European Union, but above all from the point of view of all the governance and financial instruments at Union level,” he said.
EU cohesion policy, about one-third of the overall EU budget, is the EU’s main instrument to help poorer regions catch up with richer ones, although richer regions are also eligible for funding in smaller sums.
Amid discussions over a potential EU enlargement toward the east, other countries have also expressed their concerns.
“If more countries come in and the funds are not increased, then everyone gets less,” Isolde Ries, head of the German delegation at the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), recently told Euractiv.
An internal EU document seen by Euractiv earlier this month, suggested EU enlargement would have a severe impact with up to €61 billion cohesion money going to Ukraine over seven years, leaving less money for other countries.
(Ânia de Ataíde | Lusa.pt, edited by Maria de Deus Rodrigues)
