The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) held on 14 July a debate on the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020 with the European Commission. Among the conclusions drawn from the debate, EESC members consider that the EU should aim to drastically reduce administrative burden.

The Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget, Janusz Lewandowski, presented the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014-2020 on a debate held with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on the future EU budget. According to the Commissioner, the proposal is fundamentally a new vision of Europe for the next years, in line with austerity and trying to make the best of tax-payers money. The EESC Vice president Jacek Krawczyk underlined the point that the review of the budget was not an accountancy issue but a political project, and that the future of cohesion policy was a fundamental issue at stake.

The EESC has issued an opinion on the EU Budget Review ahead of the Commission's proposal in which is eager to implement a new own resources system to provide the EU with direct revenues and thereby abandon the "juste retour" principle which is. Gérard Dantin, Vice-President of the Workers' Group of the EESC and one of the opinion's responsible also believes that it would be unacceptable for the process of European integration to be held to ransom by the imperative of reducing national deficits, as it would present a direct threat to the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy. Indeed, although an increase in the EU's budget affects the national budgets, the cost of "non-Europe" would be even higher.

The Polish EU Presidency has foreseen to launch a debate on the Multi-annual Financial Framework. In addition, the EESC considers that the public should be properly informed of how the EU is spending tax-payers money and the EU should aim to drastically reduce administrative burden.