On discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Union agencies for the financial year 2024

OPINION

The Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety calls on the Committee on Budgetary Control, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following into its proposal for a decision:

General considerations

1. Welcomes the constructive cooperation between the European Parliament and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), illustrated, inter alia, by the annual exchange of views with the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI) and the presentation of the agencies to the Committee in December 2024;

2. Welcomes the strengthened cooperation between ECHA, EFSA and the EEA under the One Health Approach, enabling them to better address challenges to human, animal, plant and environmental health;

3. Expresses its satisfaction that the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has declared the transactions of the Agencies underlying the annual accounts for the financial year 2024 to be legal and regular in all material respects, and that their financial position is fairly represented in all material respects;

4. Welcomes the measures taken by the agencies in light of the European Parliament recommendations in its discharge for the financial year 2023; stresses the importance of maintaining the Agencies’ efforts in terms of cooperation with other agencies and international organisations, for increased digitalisation, and gender and geographical balance in management positions; calls on all Union agencies to include in their next Annual Activity Reports updated gender-disaggregated data by grade, as well as data on the geographical distribution of staff, in order to enhance transparency and enable effective parliamentary oversight of equality and diversity across the agency workforce;

5. Welcomes the fact that the Agencies took effective corrective actions following most of the 2023 observations from the ECA; notes with concern the 2024 observations for the Agencies, in particular those related to budgetary management, late payments and carry-overs; calls on the Agencies to ensure that corrective and targeted action continues for the benefit of implementing EU policy;

6. Recalls that the discharge procedure assesses not only the legality and regularity of budgetary management, but also the principles of economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the use of public funds; underlines the added value for citizens, public authorities and economic operators of the scientific and regulatory work of ECHA, EEA and EFSA; calls on them to focus on providing timely, predictable and high-quality outputs that allow efficient planning and compliance;

Part I – Discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Chemicals Agency for the financial year 2024

7. Acknowledges the crucial role of ECHA in implementing a growing number of Union legislation; notes that in recent years, ECHA has been tasked with additional responsibilities related to new legislation on batteries, drinking water and serious cross- border threats to health; welcomes ECHA’s efforts to address emerging challenges and legislative changes and to support decision-makers; emphasizes that ECHA should ensure that its procedures and guidance are proportionate, predictable, simple and user-friendly for users, in particular SMEs, while fully safeguarding a high level of protection for citizens and the environment;

8. Notes that in 2024, ECHA started the implementation of its new Strategy 2024-2028; expects ECHA to closely monitor the implementation of the new strategy to achieve its full potential;

9. Welcomes the organisational review that ECHA undertook to address the evolving nature and increasing complexity of its tasks and mandates; calls on ECHA to follow-up on the implementation of the recommendations stemming from the review which addressed ways of working, strategic prioritisation and organisation structure; regrets the continued gender imbalance at the middle and senior management levels; notes that the Agency's senior management is currently composed of 70% men and 30% women, according to the figures communicated; welcomes the measures taken by ECHA to increase the number of female applicants but invites ECHA to strengthen its effort to achieve gender balance;

10. Notes that 32.3% of its staff are nationals of the Member State where the Agency is located, which is an increase from the previous financial year; recalls the importance of geographical balance and encourages the Agency to continue to take the necessary measures to ensure balanced and fair geographical representation;

11. Welcomes the good performance of ECHA in implementing its budget, with a 99.5% commitment rate and 0.5% of cancelled payment appropriation rate, and a processing of 99.8% of payments within legal deadlines;

12. Observes that the Agency’s budget relies on collected fees and a contribution from the Union’s general budget; reiterates its call to address the limited predictability of ECHA’s fee income and to improve the Agency’s budgetary certainty, including by strengthening its governance in line with the commitments set out in the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability; notes that the ongoing revision of ECHA’s Basic Regulation provides a timely opportunity to enhance the Agency’s financial and organisational stability and to support effective long-term planning;

13. Notes that in 2024, 178 outputs were delivered out of the planned 200; recognises the strong performance of ECHA’s Committees in delivering opinions to the Commission and welcomes the progress made in increasing their capacity; notes, however, that difficulties persist in recruiting sufficient experts from Member States, which may affect the Committees’ overall capacity and expertise; invites ECHA to continue reviewing the Committees’ working methods to ensure they can meet current and future tasks, and calls for reinforced cooperation with Member States and targeted measures to help secure the necessary scientific expertise;

14. Welcomes the ECHA’s efforts to promote the use of alternatives to animal testing for the regulatory assessment of chemicals and to foster understanding of the opportunities and challenges in moving away from animal testing while ensuring a high level of protection of human health and the environment; stresses the need for ECHA to continue supporting the Commission and Member States in developing non-animal methodologies (NAMs), and to facilitate their systematic integration and regulatory acceptance across all hazard categories (including endocrine disruptors and chronic toxicity), in particular for regulatory hazard identification and risk management;

15. Underlines the importance of strictly avoiding conflicts of interests in the work of the Agency and its Committees ensuring full transparency of ECHA’s activities; welcomes in this regard ECHA’s efforts to increase public access to information, in particular with the launch of the first version of the ECHA Chem portal, enabling public access to chemical safety information; encourages ECHA to further develop this tool by increasing its visibility and making it as user friendly as possible;

16. Encourages ECHA to continue its efforts in strengthening its relationships with Member States and stakeholders; welcomes in this regard the launch of a new External Communications Strategy and Stakeholder Engagement Approach and the adoption of an Action Plan to increase support to SMEs;

17. Commends the increased collaboration with other EU Agencies and the signature of the One Health framework of action together with EFSA, EMA, the EEA and ECDC; welcomes in particular the continuous cooperation with EFSA, with which a joint guidance on risk assessments on bees from the use of biocides was delivered; invites ECHA to continue to pursue those efforts;

Part II – Discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Environment Agency for the financial year 2024

18. Stresses that the EEA provides sound, independent scientific information on the environment; welcomes the quality of its output released in 2024, such as European Climate Risk, Accelerating the circular economy in Europe, Europe’s state of water 2024 - the need for improve water resilience, Europe’s sustainability transition outlook, Zero pollution monitoring assessment; welcomes the introduction of a flagship approach to selected publications aiming to prioritise and put extra effort into communicating those outputs;

19. Commends the European Environment Agency for the work that resulted in its highly informative report on Europe’s environment 2025 which noted that Europe’s biodiversity is in a poor state and that the outlook for biodiversity is negative, as efforts to protect and restore nature require time to deliver and persistent pressures remain;

20. Notes that the EEA is tasked with tracking progress towards the 8th Environment Action programme (‘8th EAP’), which builds on the European Green Deal and sets the framework for Union environmental policy until 2030, with a long-term priority objective for 2050 of living well within planetary boundaries; welcomes the release of its second annual monitoring report;

21. Notes that in 2024, EEA’s budget execution rate was of 100% of the annual budget and the delivery rate of key reports and assessments of 97%; commends the high delivery rates for the EEA key performance indicators (KPIs) in 2024 and encourage the EEA to maintain its efforts towards fulfilling its KPIs;

22. Acknowledges the results of the European Commission evaluation of the EEA-Eionet for the period 2017-2021, which was concluded in July 2024, and which found that while the EEA-Eionet has effectively contributed to the development and implementation of EU environmental and climate policies, assessing the efficiency of resource use was challenging due to a lack of adequate monitoring and data; points out that the evaluation also stressed the need to adapt the working procedures to effectively respond to the current complex environmental context; welcomes, in this context, the launch of a revision process of EEA’s KPIs to reflect the outcomes of the EEA-Eionet evaluation 2017-2021; stresses that these KPIs should capture the efficiency of resource use and the policy impact for Member States, regional and local authorities and economic operators;

23. Welcomes the EEA-Eionet Digital Capability Strategy 2025-2030; reiterates its call for additional funds to be allocated for digitalisation in the EEA, in order to modernise systems and increase effectiveness, respond to increased demands and improve user-friendliness, and ensure continued strong cybersecurity within an environment of rapidly changing cyber risks;

24. Reiterates its concern that despite the multi-year nature of the EEA’s tasks, an imbalance continues to exist concerning the numbers of permanent versus contractual posts, as well as operational staff versus support staff, leading to a constant need for reskilling as well as an overload of administrative work for scientists; considers that taking into account the substantial increase of workload, and in order to properly perform its tasks, the EEA should optimise the internal allocation of staff, make full use of digital tools and services and be enhanced with sufficient staff numbers in the years to come;

25. Notes that in 2024, the EEA launched an update of its organisational structure, with the aim of enhancing the Agency's capacity to deliver trusted and actionable knowledge, foster internal collaboration, and improve strategic engagement with stakeholders; notes that this update is based on three objectives: (1) Optimising Work Programme Structure and Service Delivery, (2) Structural Adaptation and Organisational Alignment and (3) Enhancing Management and Leadership Structure; notes that these changes took effect on 1 January 2025; encourages the EEA to closely monitor the implementation of the update;

26. Notes that the work of the EEA is by nature trans-boundary and that the quality and usefulness of the EEA research and activities is significantly enhanced by the inclusion of non-EU EEA member countries and non-EU EEA cooperating countries, for example demonstrated by the excellent standing cooperation with the Western Balkan countries; hopes in the context of enlargement that the EEA will soon be able to welcome Moldova and Ukraine as cooperating or member countries; regrets also in this context that the UK has not yet returned as an EEA member or cooperating country following its exit from the European Union;

27. Stresses that the work of EEA on climate, water resilience, pollution and the circular economy are particularly important for agriculture, rural areas and regions most exposed to climate change and water stress; calls on the EEA to ensure that its work programme clearly addresses the information needs of farmers, rural communities and regional authorities, so that environmental and climate objectives are pursued in compatibility with food security and the competitiveness of the agricultural sector;

Part III – Discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the European Food Safety Authority for the financial year 2024

28. Welcomes EFSA's contribution to the safety of the Union food and feed chain and its considerable efforts in providing risk managers with comprehensive, independent and up-to-date scientific advice on questions linked to the food chain and safety; highlights the need to improve efficiency and transparency in the EFSA’s process architecture and therefore welcomes EFSA’s efforts to adapt its communication strategy to ensure transparency and public engagement in a context of challenging societal changes;

29. Notes that in recent years EFSA has been assigned additional responsibilities related to increasing detailed and expanded risk assessments aimed at reducing anthropogenic pressures on flora and fauna; stresses that this widening mandate should not compromise EFSA’s broader societal goals to enable innovation and keeping European scientists and companies at the forefront of scientific and technological development while safeguarding human, animal and plant health.

30. Welcomes the continuous involvement of EFSA in the work of the ENVI Committee and more generally its engagement in initiatives related to food safety;

31. Notes that, in order to preserve its relevance and credibility in addressing future challenges, EFSA should continue to strengthen its investments in preparedness activities in clearly defined priority areas, with a particular focus on supporting innovation, scientific excellence and measures that enhance the sustainability and resilience of the agri-food system;

32. Notes that 2024 has been a year of change for EFSA with the renewal of its scientific panels which took effect on 1 July 2024 for a new 5-year term; welcomes the increase of applications received which resulted in the increase in number of suitable experts;

33. Regrets, however, that the geographical balance of new hires fell short of the Agency’s own objectives, with only 38% of newcomers recruited from outside the host Member State; calls on the Agency to strengthen outreach and recruitment efforts to improve geographical representation across its workforce, in line with the principles of diversity, inclusiveness and the European character of the EU agencies;

34. Notes that EFSA has not yet published updated gender-balance data for senior and managerial positions for 2024; notes, however, that according to EFSA’s Programming Document 2024–2026, women accounted for only 37.5% of senior management posts (Directors and Heads of Department/Unit) in 2023; calls on EFSA to systematically publish comprehensive gender-disaggregated data for all staff categories, including senior and middle management, in its Annual Activity Report, in order to ensure transparency and enable Parliament to monitor progress towards gender balance at all hierarchical levels;

35. Stresses the need for EFSA to include ecotoxicologists, entomologists, and biodiversity experts in all working groups assessing pesticides and biocontrols in order to protect non-target organisms and ecosystems; notes with concern that the EFSA working group preparing the new insecticide guidelines reportedly included no entomologist, undermining the credibility of the assessments of the impacts on insect and ecosystems; encourages EFSA to ensure that all working groups include independent experts;

36. Notes with concern that EFSA closed only 550 scientific questions in 2024, below the target of 626 and below the results of 2023 (660); notes that according to EFSA, this decrease can be explained by a number of factors including the renewal of experts in scientific panels, the low quality of application dossiers, especially on novel food, the inconsistent use of submission advice mechanisms by applicants and the increased number of confidentiality requests; underlines that timely risk assessments are crucial for citizens, authorities and economic operators and that delays create uncertainty and unnecessary costs; highlights the need to address this underachievement and expects EFSA to reach its set targets;

37. Highlights the need to step up efforts to optimise the balance between efficiency and quality in confidentiality assessments, ensuring that procedures remain proportionate, transparent and supportive of high scientific standards;

38. Welcomes the improvement in EFSA’s timeliness of adoption, which increased to 89% compared to 85% in the previous year;

39. Highlights that, in a period of rapid scientific development in biotechnology, a well-resourced EFSA is essential to enable safe innovation, ensure legal certainty for applicants and maintain public trust; expresses concern that the persistent and growing backlog in recent years indicates structural capacity constraints that risk weakening the Union’s position in emerging food and feed technologies, undermining the competitiveness of EU companies and making the EU a less attractive environment for international talent and scientific exchange; regrets the perceived lack of urgency of the Commission in the absence of proposals, funding and prioritization to effectively address the challenges EFSA is facing;

40. Recalls that since 2015, the Parliament has adopted 95 resolutions objecting to the placing on the market of GMOs for food and feed; highlights that one reason for these objections is the gaps in the risk assessment undertaken by the Authority's Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms; urges the Authority to address and close these gaps as a matter of urgency;

41. Takes note that, according to the Annual Strategy Survey launched by EFSA to gather feedback from its customers, partners and stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in the delivery of EFSA’s scientific opinions, EFSA’s ability to provide advice in a timely manner remains a point of attention, as in previous years; welcomes the measures taken by EFSA to increase the speed of risk assessment and the inclusion of ‘increased speed in RA’ in its updated performance framework; underlines that improvements in timeliness must not come at the expense of scientific rigour, and welcomes ongoing efforts to streamline procedures while encouraging further targeted enhancements that preserve the overall quality of EFSA’s work;

42. Stresses that while increasing the speed of risk assessment is welcomed, this must not compromise the quality, independence, or transparency of the scientific input provided;

43. Highlights the need for EFSA to develop strong cooperation with all its stakeholders, including the other Agencies for better connection and outputs dissemination; welcomes the cooperation with ECHA for the implementation of the Chemical Strategy for sustainability and the One substance-one assessment approach; welcomes EFSA’s strengthened cooperation with Member States, including with the continued support of focal points; encourages the EFSA to even further increase its efforts to protect animal welfare and promote the use of non-animal testing methods, also in its cooperation with other institutions;

44. Highlights the key role played by micro, small and medium-sized enterprises throughout the EU agri-food chain and recalls that climate and environmental policies should support farmers and food producers; calls on EFSA to pay particular attention to user-friendliness, proportionality and cost-effectiveness for smaller operators, while maintaining a high level of consumer, animal and plant-health protection;

45. Acknowledges the structural challenges EFSA faces in attracting talent, including constraints linked to EU-wide recruitment rules, limited flexibility of contractual and salary frameworks, shortages of specialists in certain scientific fields, and administrative or language requirements that narrow the applicant pool; notes the progress made in increasing EFSA’s visibility in the job market and encourages continued efforts to broaden and diversify recruitment;

46. Notes the continuing challenges in attracting and retaining top scientific talent; underlines that an overreliance on temporary contract stat-term staff hampers long-term capacity building, continuity of expertise and the development of a committed and stable scientific talent pool; Calls the Commission to reserve the necessary means to develop EFSA into the centre of European biotech innovations with positive spill-overs on innovation and entrepreneurship and the EU's academic institutions;

47. Notes that EFSA exceeded its 2024 occupancy rate target and the 2023 result of 98.3% by achieving a 99.6% rate, thus optimising human resources availability;

48. Notes that a new call for the next Executive Director was launched in September 2024; invites EFSA to ensure a smooth transition following the appointment of the new Executive Director;

Conclusion

49. Recommends, based on the facts available, that discharge be granted to the Executive Directors of the Agencies in respect of the implementation of the Agencies’ budget for the financial year 2024.

ANNEX: DECLARATION OF INPUT

The Chair in his capacity as rapporteur for opinion declares under his exclusive responsibility that he did not include in his opinion input from interest representatives falling within the scope of the Interinstitutional Agreement on a mandatory transparency register, or from representatives of public authorities of third countries, including their diplomatic missions and embassies, to be listed in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.

INFORMATION ON ADOPTION BY THE COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION