European Council President António Costa has arrived in Malta earlier today on his Tour des Capitales. The European Council President is visiting European capitals for a series of bilateral meetings with national leaders to hear their priorities first-hand and prepare the ground for the next European Council and the Union’s most important pending decision: the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework.
Preisdent Costa is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Robert Abela in Valletta this morning. The stop in Malta forms part of a packed Thursday itinerary that also takes him to Madrid for talks with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and later to Lisbon for a working dinner with Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro. Yesterday he held meetings in Warsaw and Berlin. The tour, now in its third week, aims to cover nearly all 27 member states by 17 September.
The central topic in every capital has been the next seven-year EU budget. President Costa has repeatedly stressed that an agreement must be reached before the end of 2026 so that funding for farmers, businesses, students, researchers and cohesion programmes is not interrupted in 2028. He has also argued that the new MFF must look different from the current one, with more emphasis on defence readiness, competitiveness, innovation and strategic resilience, while still supporting cohesion and the Common Agricultural Policy. New own resources will be needed, he has said, so that national contributions can stay within “reasonable limits.”
Newsroom
Leave a Reply