Analysis
EU Values Foresight
Society
Viktor Orbán’s New Assault on Free Media and Civil Society
23 November 2023
Cohesion policy promotes upward social convergence among EU countries. It is well-managed, well monitored and supports quality projects. Unlike tax avoidance and evasion, cohesion funding is a cash flow that works and delivers results.
According to a widely discussed piece in Politico by Clotilde Armand, there is a major fallacy at the heart of the EU’s budget debate, because we do not take into account the cash flow from the East to the West.
Profits of multinational corporations are being shifted, tax bases are eroded and the governments in Central European countries are left with less money to address their societies’ needs.
I will not argue that more money is being shifted than new member states get from cohesion policy as Mrs Armand and Thomas Piketty before her.