On the weekend, the Friends of Cohesion group, which consists of 17 EU countries including Slovakia, issued a declaration stating that they would not tolerate any significant lowering of the volume of resources that was allocated to EU-member countries in the current programme period. Moreover, representatives of the countries who met in Portugal on Saturday agreed on a joint approach in talks regarding the EU's next multi-year financial framework for 2021-27. As Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said, the formation can imagine cutting expenditures for centrally managed programmes, which, according to Pellegrini, should see an "extreme" rise.
The Friends of Cohesion are an informal group formed by EU-member countries that are beneficiaries of resources from the EU Cohesion Fund. The first meeting of the group took place in Romania in 2012.
