Think Tank

On 17 July 2025, the Commission released its proposal for the MFF for the 2028-2034 period.The European Parliament’s Committee for Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI Committee) has requested this briefing to analyse how the proposed 2028-2034 MFF would provide funding for climate and environment objectives. The proposed MFF introduce a horizontal 35% spending target for climate and environment, and streamlined 'do no significant harm' principle.The proposed NRP Fund and European Competitiveness ...

Data centres are key to innovation in artificial intelligence (AI). Data centres are needed to access on-demand and scalable computational power and to deploy centralised digital services. Both are key in the lifecycle of large AI models, as their training and execution are intensive and centralised. Increased EU data centre capacity would benefit AI innovation, as would research and innovation to achieve resource optimisation and the decentralisation of computational tasks. Weak EU AI development ...

The Cybersecurity Act (CSA) came into force in 2019 as part of the EU's efforts to build strong cybersecurity. Since its introduction, the EU cybersecurity regulatory framework has become more complex in response to the rise in cyber-attacks. New EU rules, as well as changes in the geopolitical context, have impacted the CSA, and the regulation is currently under review. Although stakeholders are aligned on most issues, significant differences remain, notably in addressing non-technical risks relating ...

In 2007, the EU adopted the INSPIRE Directive, which – together with the 2003 Directive on public access to environmental information – created a framework for Member States to make existing spatial environment data ('green data') available in a harmonised way. INSPIRE had several implementation steps up until 2021. Implementation of the INSPIRE Directive has been constantly monitored and supported by EU institutions. The European Commission's first implementation report of 2016 showed that, despite ...

The IA is part of the second package of Commission proposals for programmes under the 2028 2034 multiannual financial framework (MFF). It acknowledges from the start that it deviates from the scope and standard IA methods defined by the Commission's better regulation guidelines and toolbox, which affects all parts of the IA. Another particularity is the fact that the IA is entirely qualitative and does not provide any quantified estimates, either for the problem definition, or for the impacts, or ...