ContextSpeech by the Eurogroup President at the Annual EU Budget Conference 2026, on using the EU budget to fund strategic priorities.
Why it mattersArgues for tying EU money to reforms, as the recovery fund did, while the next EU budget is negotiated.
- The EU budget must fund strategic priorities.
- Reforms and funding are not always linked.
- Member states' potential is not fully used.
- Link reforms to funding as in the RRF.
- Think out of the box to unlock European value.
- Use the budget to generate economic activity.
Read the speech summary
1. The budget and the euro
At the annual EU budget conference, Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis answered the question of how the European budget supports the euro by shifting from how to spend money to how to generate it. A currency is only as strong as the economy standing behind it, and investors put money into issuers' output potential, robustness and trustworthiness. In a world where technology is a strategic asset, energy a security issue and dependencies a geopolitical weakness, resilience has become a source of competitiveness, which is the base of monetary strength. So the multiannual financial framework should be about strengthening long-term capacity to create prosperity, and the debate should move from a zero-sum game over scarce funds to a positive-sum one.
2. The spectrum example
Europe's best achievements, he argued, came from creating new economic value through scale and ending fragmentation, as with the coal and steel community, the single market and now the savings and investments union. As a concrete case he cited radio spectrum, the asset underpinning AI, manufacturing, mobility, satellites and defence, which is still sold through 27 separate auction systems with 27 regulators, even though Europe has telecom champions that compete globally. Greece's 2020 auction aimed at quick roll-out and put a quarter of proceeds into a fund for 5G applications. If 6G and 5G renewal auctions were synchronised, the proceeds could become an own resource for the EU budget and endow an EIB fund for next-generation applications. He concluded that faith in the euro depends on faith in the European economy.