The road to FP10: What role for the Parliament in shaping the next MFF? + New Year Reception

Without a shadow of doubt, 2026 will be a pivotal year to the future of Europe. Against a backdrop of geopolitical headwinds and the ongoing war in Ukraine, the EU institutions will soon enter into complex negotiations over the size, scope and structure of the Union’s next multi-year budget (MFF). Even though this process is expected to run until late 2027, the European Parliament – as one of the two ‘co-legislators’, alongside the Council of the EU – has been actively mobilising in response to the Commission’s first MFF proposals. More specifically, since the autumn its committees, political groups and parties have been competing to secure lead roles in defining the Parliament’s negotiating position on strategically important files and budget lines. 

This internal process may seem rather abstract and distant to those outside of the ‘Brussels bubble’, but it holds plenty of implications for research, technology development and innovation. The reality is that multiple parliamentary committees will be involved in drafting legislation for component parts of the next MFF that will be materially relevant to R&I – including those dedicated to industry & research, trade, budget, internal market, and economic & financial affairs, to name but a few. In various instances, therefore, the boundary conditions and priorities for future instruments will be discussed set in fora that are not necessarily specialised in the fields of science, technology and innovation.

Parallel to the MFF, the European Commission’s Work Programme also foresees several draft legislative proposals in 2026 – including, for example, the ERA Act. Although these initiatives are formally independent from the MFF negotiations, they will unfold in parallel and are interlinked in multiple ways.

Against this backdrop, on January 13 Science|Business will convene a private town hall forum with a representative group of MEPs and its international Network to dive deeper into these institutional processes and dynamics – above all, to build greater awareness of the ways in which Parliament will shape the MFF negotiations, including FP10 and the Competitiveness Fund. Through open and interactive discussions, it will also shed light on how committees collaborate and divide decision-making competences, and how cross-party compromises emerge on complex and interconnected issues such as research funding, industrial competitiveness, strategic autonomy and security.