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A sovereign and free, competitive and sustainable Europe requires a fundamental modernisation of the EU. The EU budget and the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the years 2028 to 2034 are central to this. At the preparatory workshop of the European Parliament's Committee on Budgets on 7 November 2024, Michael Thöne outlines in his contribution which reforms on the expenditure side can strengthen the EU's original European tasks, where the revenues for this should come from and how the MFF needs to be structurally modernised in this process.
Aligning public budgets more closely with policy objectives, impacts and sustainability has long been a central research area at FiFo. With the start of the 'inception phase’ on 25 October 2024, the Institute embarks on a new project to support the Ministry of Finance of Baden-Württemberg in developing green budgeting practices. The project is part of an EU-wide process organised by the European Commission (DG Reform) and managed by Expertise France.
The financing of international climate efforts and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is unreliable and insufficient. Joint international taxes and contributions promise to remedy this situation. The Global Solutions Initiative presents a paper in Berlin on 30 September 2024 in which Helge Sigurd Næss-Schmidt, Margit Schratzenstaller-Altzinger, Michael Thöne, Christian Kastrop and Rémy A. Weber develop six performance criteria for global SDG financing and apply them to selected proposals. Particularly suitable are rising carbon taxes for aviation, shipping and energy-intensive industries, as well as the use of gross national income as a direct tax base, already established in the EU as an own resource.
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has led to a reassessment of security policy in Germany. In 2022, at the 'turn of an era', a special fund of 100 billion euros was created to close the defence gaps of the past. However, this money will soon be expended. At the 19th Petersberg Dialogue on Security, jointly organised by the German Armed Forces Association, the German Society for Security Policy and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Michael Thöne discusses the fiscal priorities of the ‘Zeitenwende’ and the question of how Germany can raise up to 100 billion euros each year for defence from 2027 onwards.
In 2030, one in seven municipal positions in North Rhine-Westphalia will remain vacant. With this edition of the NRW.BANK.Fokus Kommunen survey, FiFo is examining the financial situation, the investment backlog and climate protection in North Rhine-Westphalia's municipalities, as well as the growing personnel gap in cities, towns and districts. Due to demographic change, the gap cannot be closed by personnel policy alone. The study therefore also investigates how administrative simplification and other measures can reduce the need for personnel.