The EU budget's mid-term review: with its promising reform proposals, the Commission lays the groundwork for the next, post-2020 budget

The EU's Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) lays down the amounts available for the EU budget over seven-year periods - currently about one billion euros for 2014-2020 - and at the same time it sets the EU's political priorities. The midterm review or rather revision offers a rare opportunity of reworking the established sums and adapting the MFF to new topical challenges. The Commission evidently wants to use this chance: on 14 September 2016, it presented an extensive package of proposals for reforming the MFF. This opens up the possibility of improving an unsatisfactory situation, in which the EU is unable to react to a changing environment or new crises with a policy that has a sound financial foundation, or re-orientate its budget. The revision also lays the groundwork for the negotiations on the new, post-2020 financial framework, which will begin in 2018. (author's abstract