The Multiannual Financial Framework 2014-2020 and the Europe 2020 Strategy - Ambitions beyond (Financial) Capacities? Path Dependency and the EU Budget

It is a widely accepted fact that there are considerable advantages in funding research at the EU level, given that research becomes more efficient when it is undertaken on a larger scale. For this reason, the European Commission proposed the MFF 2014-2020 as a tool to contribute to the Europe 2020 Strategy. This new orientation of the EU budget, together with the lessons learned during the economic crisis, seemed to represent, at the forefront of the MFF negotiations, a critical constellation for change in the nature of the communitarian budget and its conversion into a policy instrument. In this paper, I will analyze both the preferences of the main actors in the negotiations and the negotiating process, as well as the design of the Multi-Annual Financial Framework 2014-2020, asking: How far will the MFF 2014-20 contribute to reaching the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy; is there a new direct political and policy link between the EU budget and the goals of the EU 2020 strategy?