No. 34 The future of the Common AgriculturaL Policy 50 ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CULTIVAR However, this strategy involves significant risks. By opting for an essentially centralised model, the EU risks shifting its own centre of gravity. The promise to overcome the ‘competitiveness gap’ could What is at stake is not just a technical adjustment, but a political shift that redefines hotwhe EU understands its territory and its own economic competitivenes.s the Community principle of subsidiarity that inspired policies such as the CAP and Cohesion. What is at stake is not just a technical adjustment, but a political shift that redefines how the EU turn into the construction of a two-speed Europe, in which states with greater fiscal and industrial capacity capture a disproportionate share of the benefits, while the rest become mere executors of policies designed elsewhere. 5.1. The new budegtary logci: consolidation and centralisation The proposed new MFF is based on three structural changes. understands its territory and its own economic competitiveness. 5.2. The silent erosion of foundational policies In this process, shared management policies, pillars of the Union's territorial legitimacy, become the main victims. The CAP, for decades the largest political and budgetary bloc in the EU and a symbol of balance between integration and diversity, is reconfigured and diluted into a generic envelope of "prosperity and cohesion". It loses conceptual autonomy, institutional identity and political visibility. The first one is budgetary consolidation through the aggregation of programmes which, under the guise of simplification, reinforces the functional control of the European Commission. In this process, shared management policies, pillars of the Union's territorial legitimacy, become the main victims ... The change is profound. Cohesion, for its part, sees its role relativised in the face of centralised instruments whose dominant logic is not territorial convergence but aggregate competitiveness. The second is the creation of a European Competitiveness Fund, which in practice will become the main instrument for financing critical technologies and large-scale industrial infrastructure with centralised management and without any 'windows' that might introduce correction criteria in territorial distribution. The third consists of the permanent institutionalisation of the model inaugurated by the RRF, through national plans that depend on central validation, uniform targets and indicators, reinforced conditionality and continuous evaluation by the Commission, with reduced budgetary relevance compared to previous cycles and the generalisation of national co-financing modalities. These instruments reinforce the Europe of Law and the directory of the Europe of Sovereignties, mentioned in point 2 above, but they move away from The change is profound. The CAP is no longer seen as a structuring policy, as part of the European social contract, but is now treated as a technical component subordinate to functional objectives. This change affects the constitutional balance of European integration in a Europe that weakens rural areas, peripheral territories and internal cohesion. 6. Portuga l's placein this new E uropean cycle The ongoing reconfiguration of the European model poses specific challenges for Portugal. Although the current proposals for the 2028–2034 MFF provide for a significant financial envelope for our country, around €36 billion in the Single Fund/NRP and a ring-fenced fund of approximately €7.5 billion for the CAP, the redefinition of the European model poses structural challenges, since European political and budgetary centralisation may result in a loss of influence and strategic margin.
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