In 2011, the Commission announced its objective of spending at least 20% of the 2014-2020 EU budget on climate action.[1]  In a special audit report in 2016, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) warned of the risk of falling short of the 20% target for EU spending on climate action.[2]
They concluded: “there is serious risk that the 20% target will not be met” and “more and better-focused climate action funding in some European Structural and Investment Funds, but largely business as usual in others”.  

In 2018, the Commission set a more ambitious goal for the proposed 2021-2027 EU budget – a target of 25% of expenditure contributing to climate objectives.[4]  This was reiterated in the European Green Deal communication of 11 December 2019. In May 2020, the Commission presented a revised proposal for the 2021-27 EU long-term budget.[5] [6]   

The ECA published a review which aims to update the ECA’s previous analysis of climate tracking in the EU budget on 2 July 2020. They concluded that the Commission had overstated the 2014-2020 budget’s contribution to tackling climate change and warned the same was likely to be true in 2021-27.[7] The Brussels Times wrote: “EU auditors cannot confirm whether the current target of spending 20% of the EU budget on climate action will be met”.[8] Reuters wrote: ‘“The anticipated contributions to climate-related spending, in particular from some agricultural schemes, are likely to be overstated”. A Commission spokesperson said: “In the next long-term budget, we have introduced a series of improvements to make sure our programmes better contribute towards the climate objective.”[9]  

Based on the Commission proposal of May 2020, the political agreement of the Special European Council of 17-21 July 2020 sets an overall climate target of 30% applicable to the total amount of expenditure from the EU budget 2021-27.[10] [11]  

The study ‘Documenting climate mainstreaming in the EU budget’, requested by the BUDG Committee of the European Parliament, concluded: “the increase from 20% to 25% is more than accounted for by proposed changes to Climate Mainstreaming in the EU Budget the tracking of direct payments under the Common Agricultural Policy, which do not appear to be justified by the level of climate impact delivered by that expenditure.” [12]

Conclusion

Thanks to the ECA, it has become clear that The European Union is overestimating the emissions-cutting potential of climate action schemes outlined in its budget and should change its methodology for assessing their effectiveness. This issue would probably not have come to light without an audit of the ECA. However, because an audit of the ECA is not binding, its conclusions and abbreviations do lead to promises and some policy adjustments, but do not necessarily lead to major changes. Political willingness seems to be more important than facts sometimes. The trilogue about the CAP have now started, and it will become apparent in due course what comes out of this. It’s important that both the ECA and the media stay on top of it, so that the subject remains in the spotlight and changes in policy actually will take place and will be based on facts. 

Anja Haga