What changed

23.1.2024

24.1.2024

Mr Johan Van OvertveldtOvertveldtChair

Chair

Committee on Budget

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on General guidelinesGuidelines for the preparation of the 2025 budget,Budget Section–Section III – Commission (2023/2220(BUI))

Dear Mr Chair,Johan Van Overtveldt,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on ConstitutionalCulture Affairsand Education has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 728 DecemberNovember 2023, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter. It considered the matter at its meeting of 24 January 2024 and adopted the opinion at that meeting.

The Committee on Constitutional Affairs considered the matter at its meeting of 23 January 2024. At that meeting, it decided to call on the Committee on Budgets, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution.

The Committee on Culture and Education:

Insists on simplification, administrative efficiency and synergies with other funding programmes and on fresh money to improve the overall success rate of Erasmus+, Creative Europe, European Solidarity Corps (ESC), and the third strand of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV).

Stresses that learning mobility grants in Erasmus+ should cover increases in living costs to ensure widely accessible and inclusive participation. Calls for financial stability for the European Universities initiative and the Teacher Academies, together with the allocation of dedicated funding to the European Education Area (EEA) in the future. Calls for increased synergies between the EEA, the Digital Education Action Plan and the European Skills Agenda. Warns against cuts to the programme: the disappointing results obtained in the latest round of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) can only be reversed by investing in education.

Calls for an increase in the 2025 Creative Europe's budget to avoid the detrimental impact that frontloading in the first half of the financial cycle could have on the second half. Notes that the current financial allocation cannot meet the high demand for projects. Stresses the importance of maintaining a balance between the strands: calls for the adequate financing of the music sector, and of the European Capitals of Culture by increasing the Melina Mercouri Prize (Culture strand), the support of the cross-border circulation of European films, of cinemas and of video games (Media strand) and of quality journalism and media literacy (Cross-sectorial strand).

Calls for the secretariat of the future European Board for Media Services to be resourced adequately, in line with the future European Media Freedom Act. Reiterates the long-standing Parliament’s call for a permanent EU editorial and news media fund.

Stresses the need for increased funding for the ESC programme, which is massively oversubscribed by young people, as a flat-rate budget increase would not be adequate to mitigate inflation rates and would curtail the participating organisations’ ability to comply with the highest standards and inclusion measures set out in the programme; given the opportunities it offers to young people and its promotion of European values, emphasizes the need for securing regular funding for label holders over several years, increase the financial support and ensure greater flexibility among the project strands to face the increasing requests for solidarity after recurrent crises.

Emphasises that a proportionate and increased budget should be foreseen, as Citizen’s engagement in the CERV programme is crucial to address the social polarisation, the low institutional trust, the democratic backsliding, the erosion of the rule of law, the shrinking space for civil society, and the instrumentalisation of Euroscepticism.

Urges the Commission to support the system of European schools to enable high teaching standards and increase the exchange of best practices with national educational systems.

While acknowledging the need for redeployments, in the light of mandatory NGEU repayments, recalls the importance of Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps, Creative Europe and CERV, and calls for all possible efforts to keep their 7-year programme funding allocations intact.

Emphasises the importance of pilot projects and preparatory actions; stresses the need to ensure sufficient financing of proposals submitted by the Committee on Culture and Education.

Yours sincerely,

Salvatore De Meo

Sabine Verheyen

SUGGESTIONS

The Committee on Constitutional Affairs calls on the Committee on Budgets, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution:

1. Underlines that – 2025 being the post European election Year – effective communication and dialogue with citizens should be among the top priorities of the budget as fostering awareness of the EU’s decision-making and Union policies is vital for the functioning of European democracy, next to the support of the legislative work of Parliament's committees;

2. Highlights that, pending the conclusions of the European Council - including the possible convening of a Convention - the budget for 2025 should provide the necessary resources for the implementation of the Treaty changes procedure, and support information campaigns as well as the dialogue with European citizens following the Conference on the Future of Europe; underlines that the reform of the Treaties is linked to the deepening of the political integration of the Union in view of possible future enlargements and points out that the challenge of future EU enlargement cannot be met without increasing the EU budget and with additional own resources; calls for the start of discussions of the relevant financial reforms in 2025 in parallel with the ongoing accession negotiations;

3. Demands that the necessary resources are safeguarded to permanently and structurally counter disinformation and fake news, and to fight foreign interference within the EU; reminds of the need to secure proper financing for the structures within the EU institutions that are responsible for communication with citizens and countering disinformation such as the Commission Representations and European Parliament Liaison Offices/ Antennae, in order to enable them to effectively fulfil their tasks;

4. Recalls the need for the adequate financing of the Union’s programmes, activities and initiatives, in particular the European Citizens’ Initiative as well as other participatory instruments and the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme, which facilitate the participatory democracy processes in the EU, build citizens’ trust and enhance their understanding of the Union’s policies; calls for means to be made available to enhance citizens’ participation, especially the youth; recalls the need to promote a budget line on demonstrative and voluntary primary and secondary curriculum for EU and global citizenship education;

5. Calls for adequate resources to ensure transparency in the activities of interests groups and lobbies; requests in this regard to strengthen the Parliament’s Advisory Committee on the Conduct of Members as well as the Joint Transparency Register Secretariat by providing both with adequate staff and financial resources to fulfil their tasks; suggests also to ensure sufficient resources for the set up and functioning of an interinstitutional ethics body, commensurate with its mandate and tasks, in the event of its establishment;

6. Recommends that the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations receives adequate resources, in particular for staffing purposes in view of the significant enlargement of its tasks as foreseen by the Commission proposal for the recast of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 1141/2014 and considering the importance of the 2024 European election year and the additional workload created for the Authority;

7. Highlights the need to devote proper resources for the EU’s actions to strengthen the rule of law, in particular to increase the resources of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in view of the enlargement of its tasks as foreseen by the revised mandate based on the Council Regulation (EU) 2022/555 of 5 April 2022;

8. Recalls the importance to enhance the participation of the Union’s local entities, towns and villages, beyond Member States capitals in the democratic life of the Union in particular, and to support the implementation of BELC - Building Europe with local Councillors – the network of locally elected politicians aimed at communicating the European Union through an unprecedented alliance between the European and local government structures;

9. Calls on Council and Commission to apply Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2092 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget in full; stresses that funds cannot be disbursed if Member States do not comply with all relevant requirements set forth by the Court of Justice;

10. Reiterates its long standing call for full co-decision powers, the European Parliament’s right of legislative initiative, and the abolition of vetoes for the adoption of the multiannual financial framework.

ANNEX: ENTITIES OR PERSONS FROM WHOM THE RAPPORTEUR HAS RECEIVED INPUT

The Chair in hisher capacity asof rapporteur for the opinion declares under hisher exclusive responsibility that heshe did not receive input from any entity or person to be mentioned in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.