Opinion on General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2026 - all sections

4.9.2025

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2026 - all sections (2025/0210(BUD))

Dear Mr Chair,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on Budgetary Control has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 26 June 2025, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter.

The EP Reform 2024 emphasised, inter alia, that the budgetary and discharge procedures are linked, and that results of the discharge procedure should naturally feed back into the budgetary procedure, and vice-versa. In that context, the CONT Committee considers that the resolutions of the discharge procedure for 2023, adopted in Plenary in May 2025, contain a number of observations and recommendations that the discharge authority wishes to suggest to the budgetary authority.

The Committee on Budgetary Control considered the matter at its meeting of 4 September 2025. 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.

This opinion should be read in conjunction with the Budgetary Amendments tabled by the Committee on Budgetary Control.

Yours sincerely,

Niclas Herbst

Chair of the CONT Committee

Rapporteur for the Opinion

SUGGESTIONS

1. Underlines that the Union’s financial interests are to be protected in accordance with the general principles embedded in the Union Treaties, in particular the values in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), and with the principle of sound financial management enshrined in Article 317 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and in Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 September 2024 on the financial rules applicable to the general budget of the Union (the Financial Regulation);

2. Emphasises the major importance of the Rule of Law Conditionality Mechanism for the protection of the Union budget; calls on the Commission to make full use of the tools available to address the clear risk of a serious breach of Union values and to promptly invoke the Conditionality Regulation when breaches of the Rule of Law risk impacting the Union's financial interests; supports the blocking of Union funds as long as the conditions are not entirely fulfilled and warns against giving in to blackmail; urges the Commission to guarantee a holistic approach across different funds and legislative instruments, emphasizing that Union funds must not be allocated to activities undermining democracy or reinforcing authoritarianism; stresses the importance of guaranteeing adequate EU funding to civil society organisations active in this field, as they play a crucial role in safeguarding rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights, as previously stated in Rule of Law Reports;

3. Recalls the importance to make the use of IT tools such as EDES and ARACHNE mandatory and systematic for all Union funds, including shared management, and ensure better use of new technology in order to increase controls and protect the Union budget against fraud and misuse of funds; welcomes that the recast of the Financial Regulation that all Member States will have an obligation to provide the Commission with access to data on beneficiaries from EU Funds, to be fed into ARACHNE by automated means; notes that the development of ARACHNE+ is in progress and on track to meet the obligations laid down in the Financial Regulation; considers it of utmost importance that the development continues unimpeded and stresses that the Commission should make sufficient budget available to make sure that neither the development nor the technical assistance needed for its implementation are at risk;

4. Considers that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is an indispensable part of the EU anti-fraud architecture; considers it imperative to ensure that the EPPO has the resources necessary to carry out its mandate, especially when regular oversight over the implementation of EU Funds is under pressure of being reduced; notes the amount assigned to the EPPO in the 2026 draft budget of EUR 91.545.128 in commitment and payment appropriations while the Council's position on the draft budget 2026 reduced this with EUR 5.886.284 to EUR 85.658.844; further notes the EPPO’s estimate that compared to the 2026 draft budget additional funds are needed to cover its staffing needs; considers that such an increase in the EPPOs budget is justified;

5. Stresses that the EPPO's 2024 Annual Report highlights a sharp increase in digital fraud schemes affecting the financial interests of the Union, including cross-border operations using false identities, cryptocurrencies, and digital platforms to defraud EU-funded grants and public contracts; points out that these increasingly sophisticated offences require highly specialised personnel and advanced technological tools for data analysis and investigation and therefore, it is essential that any budgetary increase ensures sufficient and structural funding to strengthen the EPPO’s digital capabilities and those of other competent actors, particularly in the fields of cyber fraud detection, big data financial analysis and operational cooperation with Member States; warns that failure to address these growing needs would seriously undermine the Union’s capacity to defend its financial interests against evolving and transnational threats;

6. Considers that the activities of the EPPO do in itself not only contribute to the protection of the EU’s financial interests, but also have the potential to recover amounts of the EU budget that were not used for its intended purpose due to criminal activities; considers that amounts resulting from seizing and confiscating measures adopted by the European Delegated Prosecutors in the Member States could, after deduction of costs incurred by the Member States’ authorities to implement these measures, flow back into the EU Budget, in line with Article 38 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1939; recalls in that regard the recommendations made by the Discharge Authority in its resolution on discharge to the EPPO and its 2025 resolution on the protection of the EU financial interests - combatting fraud; considers that the potential revenue resulting from seizing and confiscating measures should be accounted for in the EU Budget as non-assigned revenue, under a separate budget line as created by budgetary amendment CONT/1; calls on the Commission to make the necessary arrangements with the relevant national authorities to allow these amounts to enter into the EU Budget;