Opinion on Guidelines for the 2026 Budget –Section III

19.2.2025

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on Guidelines for the 2026 Budget –Section III 2024/2110(BUI)

Dear Mr Van Overtveldt,

to above, the Committee on Culture and Education has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 3 December 2024, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter. It considered the matter at its meeting of 19 February 2025 and adopted the opinion at that meeting.

The Committee on Culture and Education:

1. Insists that funding for the most successful EU and crucial programmes like Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps (ESC), Creative Europe and the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme has to be excluded from debt repayment needs for the European Union Recovery Instrument (EURI) over the whole remaining MFF period; stresses that the ‘EURI cascade mechanism’ has to be implemented effectively, protecting important programme initiatives that directly benefit citizens;

2. Welcomes further simplification in line with EP calls, e.g. through the use of lump sums in Erasmus+ , for the programmes that are close to the citizens and need to be accessible also for organisations with limited administrative capacities, and calls for further efforts to achieve that end; underlines that attention should be given to peripheral, mountainous and rural areas that experience more difficulties in accessing EU funds; calls on the Commission to continue to share regularly with Parliament, including the Committee on Culture and Education, updated indicators and statistics on the absorption of funds in these programmes;

3. Welcomes that mobility grants under Erasmus+ were increased to offset rising living costs, upon Parliament’s insistence on an increase to the programme’s budget, to ensure that the programme remains accessible and inclusive;

4. Stresses necessary efforts to widen participation and to meet inclusivity targets in order to widen the participation of the most vulnerable youth groups and people with disabilities;

5. Strongly warns against any cuts, and calls for an increase of the funding for the programme, taking into account the high implementation rates and absorption capacities of the programme; calls in particular to preserve funding to initiatives that support teacher development, such as the European Universities and the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies; highlights the growing number of applicants - e.g. a 94% increase in school education mobility applications from 2022 to 2023 ; regrets, however, the consequence of lower success rates, notably for school accreditations, which underscores the need for a substantial funding increase to meet the growing demand;

6. Insists that all funding initially allocated to the programme will be used for investing in the future of young people;

7. Emphasises the need to support sport under Erasmus+ to promote its role in improving physical and mental health and social inclusion, and to fight discrimination;

8. Deplores the additional, unanticipated costs for the media strand of Creative Europe, including the implementation of not only the AVMSD, but also of EMFA, including the secretariat of the European Board for Media Services, an additional expenditure that was not taken into account when the current MFF was set up; insists that new initiatives should always be financed from fresh money;

9. Stresses that the budget for the Creative Europe programme is insufficient to meet the high demand for projects across all its strands, with alarmingly low success rates (e.g. 17% in 2023 under the culture strand); calls for an increase of its funding and highlights the need for synergies between Creative Europe and other EU funds.

10. Calls for an increase in funding for the ESC programme, given the modest year-on-year increases of about 2% of its budget under the MFF, which is not sufficient to offset inflation rates, and the fact that it is heavily over-subscribed, resulting in a high rejection rate and, therefore, in many cases, disappointment for the young applicants; welcomes the fact that the number of participants with fewer opportunities in the programme (38%) is the highest of any EU programme and should be maintained;

11. Stresses the importance of the CERV programme for building bridges between European citizens from different Member States and promoting their engagement and participation in the democratic life of the Union, while also contributing to preserving social cohesion and helping to prevent democratic backsliding, particularly in the current challenging political situation; insists, therefore, on an increase for its budget;

12. Points out that pilot projects and preparatory actions (PPs and PAs) serve as testbeds for new policy initiatives and need adequate funding to properly fulfil that function; deplores any attempts to thwart potentially successful proposals for PPs and PAs already at the selection stage and calls for better cooperation between the Commission and the European Parliament on the selection and implementation of PPs and PAs.

Yours sincerely,

Nela Riehl

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

The rapporteur for the opinion declares under his exclusive responsibility that he 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.