Public Consultation - future EU funding for competitiveness

In 2025, the European Commission will put forward a comprehensive proposal for its next long-term budget – the multi-annual financial framework (MFF). The MFF is the European Commission’s long-term plan that sets out how much money the EU can spend over a period of seven years and on what areas. This includes EU funding for research and innovation.

The Commission believes that EU funding aimed at boosting competitiveness is divided across too many overlapping programmes, many of which support the same objectives but with varying requirements, making it difficult to combine funding effectively, thus limiting access to EU funds and reducing their overall impact.

As highlighted in President von der Leyen's Commission’s Political Guidelines, as well as in the Competitiveness Compass, the Commission will work on a simpler, more focused and impactful MFF that reflects the European strategic priorities with the ambition of being an investment-focused Commission.

A public consultation recently launched is part of the process. It contains questions about the challenges linked to competitiveness, the stage of technology that is important according to respondents and to what extent the current EU budget contributes to address certain challenges. The Commission also polls the measures that seem most impactful.

You can access the public consultation here. The deadline to provide your feedback is 6 May 2025.