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BUDGETARY ASSESSMENT (COM(2025)0547 – C100167/2025 – 2025/0221(COD))

On the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Connecting Europe Facility for the period 2028-2034, amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1679 and repealing Regulation (EU) 2021/1153

BUDG-AD-786674

Committee on Budgets · Rapporteur: Janusz Lewandowski

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The Committee on Budgets gives its budgetary assessment of the proposed Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) regulation for 2028-2034, which keeps transport and energy as its focus, adds funds for dual-use transport infrastructure and drops the digital strand. It says the programme envelope should rise from EUR 81.4 billion (EUR 72.3 billion in 2025 prices) to EUR 91.3 billion (EUR 81 billion in 2025 prices). It asks for a more detailed budget breakdown and nomenclature, more control for the budgetary authority, and rules on financial instruments, blending and external assigned revenue. It calls for funding for regions with connectivity deficits, for the revised energy network rules, and for better impact assessment and monitoring.

Committee position. The Committee on Budgets proposes that the lead committees amend the proposal to increase the CEF envelope to EUR 91.3 billion, add a detailed budgetary nomenclature in an annex, and strengthen budgetary authority control, transparency and monitoring.

Key points

  1. The proposal keeps the transport and energy focus, in particular cross-border links, introduces dedicated funds for dual-use transport infrastructure and discontinues the digital strand, which will be financed by the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF).
  2. High oversubscription and the full use of the military mobility envelope show unmet investment needs in dual-use transport infrastructure, which the committee links to EU security and defence.
  3. The committee considers the programme envelope should be increased from EUR 81.4 billion (EUR 72.3 billion in 2025 prices) to EUR 91.3 billion (EUR 81 billion in 2025 prices) to close investment gaps and support military mobility, electrification and cross-border energy infrastructure.
  4. Sufficient human, technical and IT resources must be available from the outset and throughout the 2028-2034 multiannual financial framework (MFF), including for the executive agency, without reducing the programme's financial envelope, and technical assistance is needed at national, regional and local levels.
  5. The committee insists on detailed legislation and governance, says a 'steering mechanism' cannot replace Parliament's legislative and budgetary powers, and wants the overall envelope broken down by the programme's specific objectives.
  6. It deplores the lack of a detailed budgetary nomenclature in the Legislative Financial and Digital Statement (LFDS) and recommends a more detailed nomenclature, with the three strands classified as chapters and an annex defining it, to be part of the negotiating position.
  7. All substantive policy choices must be set in the basic act, with non-essential elements adopted through delegated acts, and flexibility must respect the budgetary authority's prerogatives and ensure transparency in reallocating resources.
  8. The committee asks the Commission to ensure sufficient funding for priorities identified by the revised Trans-European Networks for Energy (TEN-E) regulation, whose new eligible actions would have access to CEF financing only in the later years of the period.
  9. It stresses stable funding for affordable cross-border rail transport and says the budgetary implications of borrowing and lending under CEF must be identified, monitored and assessed for their impact on MFF headroom or other guarantees.
  10. It welcomes financial instruments, budgetary guarantees and blending through the Global Europe delivery mechanism or the ECF InvestEU Instrument, and says reflows from financial instruments should stay within the CEF programme.
  11. It calls for complementarity between CEF and other programmes without double funding, traceable contributions, detailed nomenclature, and limits financing not linked to costs to smaller-scale projects, with large-scale projects financed on actual costs.
  12. It says external assigned revenue under CEF must be clearly circumscribed, transparent and scrutinised, and calls for grant criteria that do not disadvantage low-density or isolated areas, annual reporting on the geographic distribution of funding, and better impact assessment and monitoring.

Who is affected

  • Transport and energy sectors, especially cross-border and dual-use infrastructure projects, which would receive the increased funding.
  • The Commission, which would gain less discretion over spending priorities and transfers under a more detailed budget breakdown.
  • Rural, insular, border, peripheral and outermost regions, for which grant criteria should not structurally disadvantage projects.
  • Non-EU countries and third parties making financial contributions to the programme, whose contributions must be transparent and traceable.

Figures and deadlines

  • EUR 81.4 billion (EUR 72.3 billion in 2025 prices) — the proposed programme envelope the committee wants increased.
  • EUR 91.3 billion (EUR 81 billion in 2025 prices) — the increased envelope the committee considers necessary.
  • 2028-2034 — the multiannual financial framework period for which resources must be available.