Internal reforms of the EU

Why does the EU need internal reforms?

The EU is faced with a new geopolitical reality, a changed security landscape and increasingly complex challenges. This includes boosting the competitiveness of our economies and ensuring that citizens benefit from the green and digital transitions.

To make the EU more sovereign, competitive and secure, while also preparing for further enlargements, the EU needs to work on internal reforms. To this end, in June 2024 the European Council underlined the need to lay the necessary groundwork and address key questions related to priorities, policies and the ability to act.

The process of internal reforms should advance in parallel with the enlargement process, as both the EU and future member states must be ready at the time of accession.

• European Council, 27 June 2024

What do the internal reforms focus on?

The work on internal reforms focuses on four areas:

• values
• policies
• budget
• governance

In the Council, discussions on future reforms in these areas began in June 2023, under the Swedish Council presidency. Discussions continued under the subsequent Spanish, Belgian, Hungarian and Polish Council presidencies.

Values

The EU is founded on the values of: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.

Respect for these values, notably the rule of law and human rights, is essential to the EU’s very functioning and must be upheld by both the EU and aspiring member states. This applies across the EU and all along the enlargement path: before joining, at the time of accession and as a member state.

In the Council, initial discussions on values-related reforms have so far covered:

• optimising the EU’s rule-of-law toolbox
• conditionality measures as the most effective tool, with the possibility of making procedures more transparent and subject to clearer criteria
• options to embed conditionality elements in EU funding programmes
• involving candidate countries in the annual rule-of-law dialogue
• supporting civil society in upholding and monitoring the rule of law

• Mechanisms to uphold the rule of law

Policies

To ensure the EU’s long-term competitiveness, prosperity and leadership on the global stage and to strengthen its strategic autonomy, all relevant EU policies must be reviewed, including those likely to be affected by enlargement.

To date, the Council has been working on policies identified as priority areas, in particular competitiveness and the single market, the common agricultural policy (CAP), cohesion policy, European defence and security and freedom, security and justice.

• Competitiveness
• EU single market
• Common agricultural policy 2023-2027
• Security and defence

Budget

The future EU budget will play a key role in helping to address common priorities and emerging challenges and in ensuring that policies are financed in a sustainable manner. In this context, the multiannual financial framework (MFF), the EU’s long-term budget, is particularly important, especially the forthcoming MFF 2028-2034.

• The EU long-term budget

Governance

The EU needs to retain and improve its ability to act and to ensure the effective functioning of its institutions.

In the Council, initial discussions on governance-related reforms have focused on exploring the full potential and flexibility of EU treaties.

To this end, several issues have been identified as deserving special attention, in particular:

• the facilitation of decision-making in the Council
• the use of other flexibilities under the EU treaties such as the mechanisms that enable some member states to cooperate more closely in specific cases

Other issues that have been identified are:

• the need to simplify certain EU rules to boost EU competitiveness
• EU governance in a wider sense, covering reform efforts aimed at improving the EU institutions' working methods and functioning

Roadmap for future work on internal reforms

The process of making the EU fit for the future was first addressed by EU leaders at the informal EU summit in Granada on 6 October 2023, and further developed at subsequent European Council meetings. The Council and the Commission have also worked on this issue. In this context, four documents are relevant:

• The Granada declaration, 6 October 2023
• The future of Europe: progress report by the Spanish Council presidency, 7 December 2023
• Commission communication on pre-enlargement reforms and policy, 20 March 2024
• The future of Europe: progress report by the Belgian Council presidency, 10 June 2024

Building on the above, in June 2024 EU leaders set out a roadmap for future works on internal reforms and invited the Commission to present in-depth policy reviews with operational elements on the following four strands of work: EU values, policies, budget and governance.

The leaders also called on the Council to take work forward and present a follow-up report that reflects the four strands. Work on the internal reforms is currently taking place in the Council, in line with the four strands of the roadmap.