Abstract
The EU s budgetary negotiations have historically been a case of lowering the capabilities and increasing the expectations of the Cohesion Policy. Presented by the European Commission in May 2018, the proposal for the programming and budgetary period of 2021-27 only reasserts this historical trend when compared with the period of 2014-20.The growing gap between capabilities and expectations can also be identified when analyzing the three relevant categories of (i) budgetary allocation, (ii) strategic content, and (iii) conditionalities and administrative regulation.
The gap is growing along a do more with less -logic because the volume of budgetary allocation is once again decreasing on the capabilities side, while the strategic content on the expectations side is being simultaneously expanded with aims unrelated to the original purpose of promoting socio-economic cohesion between less and more developed member states. This constitutes a problem for Visegrád states.