“Budgetary Conditionality: be careful what you wish for”

At the Hungarian Pre-Presidency Conference on 13-14 June 2024, TEPSA will present key recommendations to the incoming Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. These recommendations are formulated by experts from the TEPSA network, without necessarily representing the views of TEPSA or its Member Institutes.

Saskia Hollander, Senior Research Fellow, and Louise van Schaik, Head of Unit EU & Global Affairs contributed the chapter “Budgetary Conditionality: be careful what you wish for”.

An extension of budgetary conditionality is likely to be part of the future EU’s longterm budget. However, there is not yet sufficient evidence that the ‘cash-for-reforms’ model is effective in guaranteeing long-term change. Moreover, the instruments suffer from some democratic shortcomings, for example related to lack of transparency and clarity of procedures. Since budgetary conditionality has farreaching consequences, there should, at the bare minimum, be consensus on which European public goods are prioritised and on the necessary conditionalities to deliver these.

Continue reading on page 5 of the recommendations.