The enlargement of the EU to the east will be a challenge for Portugal, especially because of the possible changes it will have on cohesion funds, Finance Minister Fernando Medina told a conference in Lisbon on Wednesday.

Medina spoke at the annual conference of the Association of Economists on “Portugal and the challenges of the present: the role of economists and managers” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.

“We have to start preparing about what the future will be of the country after the enlargement of the European Union,” he said, defending the importance of the creation of the post-2026 investment restructuring fund, announced during the presentation of the 2024 budget.

For Medina, this “is one of the main challenges in which the country has not thought well” in the face of an “enlargement process which, if implemented earlier than other enlargement processes, will change the map of the European Union in a very important way”.

“From geopolitical issues, where an eastward enlargement will of course strengthen the eastern tilt of the European Union, but mainly in terms of all instruments of governance and funding at Union level,” he said.

The EU’s cohesion policy, which makes up around a third of the total EU budget, is the EU’s main instrument to help poorer regions catch up with richer ones, although the latter can receive funding in smaller amounts .

Amid discussions of a possible eastward enlargement of the EU, other countries have also expressed their concerns.

“If more countries come and funds do not increase, then everyone will get less,” Isolde Ries, head of the German delegation to the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), recently told Euractiv.

An internal EU document seen by Euractiv earlier this month showed that EU enlargement would have serious implications, as up to €61 billion of cohesion money would go to Ukraine alone over seven years, leaving much less money in the coffers for the rest of the countries.