According to the plans revealed last week, Malta would receive roughly €673 million in cohesion funds between 2021 to 2027, a 24% cut on the funding for the previous financial term.

That €179 million cut would mean a roughly 24% reduction in funding for Malta. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland are set to experience similar cuts in relative terms, according to an analysis conducted by the Financial Times. 

On the contrary, the cuts as regards Germany (- 20.6%), and France (-5.4%) are far below the cuts Malta looks like getting.

In the last round of EU budget negotiations for the period stretching between 2013 and 2020, Malta had secured almost €800 million in cohesion funds, which are targeted at helping the EU's poorer regions pick up the pace and catch up with the rest of the continent. 

But since then, the country's economy has roared forward to become the fastest-growingacross all 28 member states, and GDP per capita has risen from roughly 85% of the EU average to closer to 95%.

The European Commission said last week  that it used GDP per capita as the key factor in determining cohesion policy funding allocation. This means  that the economic growth spurt has hurt Malta's chances of locking in funds.  

In effect, the Commission proposals would grant eight member states a combined total of €8.2 billion more in more cohesion funds between 2020 and 2027 than they received during the previous seven years, with Italy ending up being the winner in absolute terms (a €2.3 billion increase) and Greece, Romania and Bulgaria the biggest winners in relative terms (with each getting an 8 per cent increase). 

But those grants would be more than offset by the €45.2 billion cut from the cohesion fund budgets of 14 states, including Malta. Poland, which is locked in a series of rule of law disputes with Brussels, stands to lose the most in absolute terms, with a massive €19.5 billion cut in cohesion funding proposed. 

The figures proposed by the EU Commission last week are by no means a done deal, and form just one part of the broader EU budget.

Poland has warned that the EU’s new budget proposals risk dividing the bloc after Brussels proposed shifting more than €30bn of European funding from central and eastern to southern Europe.

Jerzy Kwiecinski, Poland’s development minister, suggested in an interview to the Financial Times that the European Commission’s plans were contentious enough to hold up agreement on the budget, the first that Brussels is implementing for the post-Brexit era.

“With this new budget we can forget about quick negotiations,” he told the Financial Times.