PARIS — Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen wants to increase the EU’s spending on external affairs in order to turn the bloc into a stronger geopolitical actor.

Speaking at the Paris Peace Forum on Tuesday morning, she said: “In the next budget I want us to spend 30 percent more on external action than we do today and I want us to spend money effectively and more strategically.”

The current Commission proposal for the bloc’s next long-term budget also calls for 30 percent boost (in current prices) to neighborhood and world spending, which includes development funding and humanitarian aid.

But this kind of spending ambition is likely to be reduced over the course of the ongoing budget negotiations, given the pressure to instead spend on European internal cohesion and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Von der Leyen underscored the need for the EU to play a greater role on the world stage to support multilateralism and to tackle global challenges like climate change, digitization, migration and poverty.

“I want to build a truly geopolitical Commission, a more outward-looking EU, a Europe that defends our common interests in the world,” von der Leyen said.

The Paris Peace Forum was launched in 2018 on the centennial of the end of World War I by French President Emmanuel Macron. It aims to reinvent and reinvigorate multilateralism.

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