The cost of fragmentation: Why spending less at the EU level costs Europe more

Europe has entered a fundamentally different geopolitical and economic era, yet it still approaches continental challenges with fragmented national responses. This article argues that Europe’s structural weakness is not only underinvestment but fragmentation: when member states duplicate procurement systems, industrial capacities and investment priorities, they reduce their effectiveness while raising the cost of public goods. The next Multiannual Financial Framework is therefore far more than a budgetary negotiation. It must become a strategic investment budget that finances genuine European public goods, invests in competitiveness and defence, protects traditional policies such as agriculture and cohesion, combines predictability with targeted flexibility and rests on genuine own resources. Spending less at the EU level does not make Europe’s challenges smaller. It simply moves the bill to national budgets, where solutions are more expensive, less coordinated and less effective.