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OPINION (COM(2025)0545 – C100166/2025 – 2025/0545(COD))

On the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework and other horizontal rules for the Union programmes and activities

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Committee on Development · Rapporteur: Niels Geuking

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The Committee on Development gives its opinion to the Committees on Budgets and Budgetary Control on the proposed regulation setting up a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework. It proposes amendments to make the framework work for external action and development. The amendments add rules for external action: a separate annex of intervention fields and indicators, tracking of Official Development Assistance, gender equality spending targets, and reporting on indirect management and budgetary guarantees. They also ask for lighter reporting for recipients in low and middle-income countries, use of existing data and reporting systems, and protection of personal data in fragile settings. Other changes add policy coherence for development, human development and inequality impacts to evaluations, and give the Commission until 1 June 2028 to define external action indicators.

Committee position. The Committee on Development proposes amendments to the lead committees to adapt the proposed regulation to external action and development cooperation, adding external action indicators, ODA tracking, gender equality targets, lighter reporting and stronger evaluation of development impacts.

Key points

  1. The committee submits amendments to the lead committees on the proposed regulation establishing a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework.
  2. The regulation should set common rules on monitoring spending, performance and evaluation, and on the 'do no significant harm' and gender equality principles inside and outside the Union.
  3. Reporting obligations should stay proportionate, especially for recipients in low and middle-income countries, and the Commission should avoid parallel reporting systems and rely on existing data, including OECD guidelines for ODA.
  4. Transparency and reporting should be context-sensitive, taking account of remote, rural, island, outermost, mountain and sparsely populated regions, and protecting personal data in humanitarian and fragile settings.
  5. The performance framework should prioritise outcome and impact indicators over purely quantitative output indicators.
  6. The Commission should provide technical guidance on the 'do no significant harm' principle by 1 January 2027, and the guidance should identify very limited and duly justified cases where the principle may not apply.
  7. The gender equality methodology should include gender budgeting, and data on performance indicators should be broken down by gender where feasible and appropriate.
  8. Intervention fields and indicators specific to external action should be set out in a separate annex or in Annex I, defined by the Commission by 1 June 2028, and linked to OECD Development Assistance Committee codes.
  9. A new article on external action and Official Development Assistance would require annual reporting on ODA and tracking of all external action resources, including budgetary guarantees, public-private partnerships and blended finance.
  10. The Single Gateway should include a dedicated section for Global Europe and external action, with information on impact, poverty and inequality reduction, and humanitarian aid presented separately.
  11. The Commission should report regularly to Parliament and the Council on indirect management and publish annually disaggregated data, including on budgetary guarantees per operation.
  12. Evaluations should cover coherence and policy coherence for development, and for development cooperation also living conditions, poverty and inequality eradication, access to basic services and human rights.

Who is affected

  • Recipients and implementing partners in low and middle-income countries, who should face proportionate reporting and benefit from existing data systems.
  • Beneficiaries and local partners in humanitarian and fragile settings, whose personal data should be protected.
  • Third countries, which should get flexibility in applying the regulation, with plans covering only candidate countries, potential candidates and neighbourhood East countries.
  • Sub-recipients of EU funding in external operations under indirect management, whose identity and amounts received should be displayed.
  • Local civil society organisations, grassroots networks and beneficiary populations, who should be consulted in evaluations of development and humanitarian programmes.

Figures and deadlines

  • Reducing administrative burden by at least 25% for all companies and at least 35% for small- and medium-sized enterprises.
  • The Commission should provide 'do no significant harm' guidance by 1 January 2027.
  • The Commission shall define intervention fields and indicators specific to external action by 1 June 2028.
  • The Commission shall publish an implementation report for each programme or activity no later than four years after the start of its implementation.
  • A retrospective evaluation shall be carried out at the latest three years after the end of the programming period.
  • Member States shall carry out evaluations at the latest two years after the end of the programming period.
  • Global Europe Instrument climate and environment spending target: '[XX% in line with the target set in Global Europe Regulation]'.