On October 6th, GÉANT’s Senior EU Liaison Adviser, Edit Herczog, joined the webinar, “The Multi Financial Framework and Next Generation EU: A Tale of Timing”, hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder.
The discussion revolved around the MFF budget of the European Union: a proposal whose legislative procedure for approval has been complex to say the least. It is particularly true in 2020, as the lengthy Brexit negotiations have come into play and also COVID-19 has made a disruptive change on both the political goals, the budget allocations, and the timeline of the negotiations at the finish line.
The lecture was divided in three parts:
- Ready: What is the MFF and why is it different from any state budgets? What are the political motivations behind the numbers?
- Set: What are the main changes? How does the future EU budget differ from the current one? What are the consequences of Brexit? What are the as yet open questions?
- Go: Will the new structure weaken democratic oversight? Will international participation be allowed in the EU programs?
Read more about the event here.
Edit Herczog was a Member of European Parliament (MEP) from 2004- 2014. Her own small consultancy is providing long term compass to generate competitive advantage based on excellence. Interested in the future and prosperity she mostly works on subjects of Data, Research, ICT and Energy, and the Budget as a main ingredient to them. This is the third MFF in which she is engaged. Edit is a committed ‘transatlanticist’. She is a Board member of the Transatlantic Policy Network an NGO registered in Washington DC to build bridges between EU and US Parliamentarians, civil servants, and businesses. She is also member of the Global Council of the Research Data Alliance. She visited Denver in 2016 as a keynote speaker at the RDA Plenary.
Edit is Hungarian and lives in Brussels. Before being elected as a politician, she worked for Unilever and ICI. She understands the East and West divide. Her motto from the beginning of her career is: “find what unites and understand what divide us”.
