Opinion on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2025- all sections

12.9.2024

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2025- all sections (2024/0176(BUD))

Dear Chair,

The Coordinators of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) decided on 24 July 2024 that ENVI would provide an opinion on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2025 - all sections (2024/0176(BUD))) in the form of a letter. Therefore, as both ENVI Chair and Standing Rapporteur for the Budget, let me provide you with ENVI’s contribution in the form of resolution paragraphs, which was adopted by ENVI at its meeting of 12 September 2024 and which I kindly request will be taken into account by your committee:

- underlines that the 2025 Union budget incorporates the impacts of the mid-term revision of the expenditure ceilings in the multiannual financial framework (MFF) which took place in February 2024, addressing the various challenges facing the Union including the imminent climate and environmental emergency, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, migratory pressures and their root causes, responding to the crisis in the Middle East and reinforcing our capacity to respond to natural disasters;

- calls to ensure the necessary human and financial resources for the fast implementation of the legislation adopted in the last legislative cycle in the areas of climate, environment, food safety and health, and focusing on a range of key priorities, such as climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity, just transition and circular economy;

- stresses the importance of strengthening the Union’s role on the international stage by increasing the funding for the Union’s actions ensuring environment protection and tackling climate change globally;

- reminds that the European Green Deal is a growth strategy and that its implementation policies should complement, support and enhance the Union’s competitiveness through the appropriate funding;

- recalls that over the course of the 2021-2027 period, the EU is set to spend at least 30% of its budget on climate-relevant objectives; welcomes the fact that the 2025 draft budget outperforms this objective, with 33,5% dedicated to climate mainstreaming;

- recalls that biodiversity should be mainstreamed in EU programmes to allocate at least 7,5% of annual spending to biodiversity objectives in 2024 and 10% in both 2026 and 2027; regrets that these objectives will not be met, since biodiversity mainstreaming amounts to 7,3% of the budget in 2024, and to 7,8% in 2026 and 7,9% in 2027; therefore, calls the Commission and other involved actors to ensure that remedial measures are put rapidly in place to reach the biodiversity mainstreaming targets; notes the importance of Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) for reaching biodiversity objectives;

- notes that the commitments under the Environmental and Climate Action policy cluster in Heading 3 ‘Natural Resources and Environment’ are planned to decrease by EUR 7,1 million, while the payments will increase by EUR 28,3 million between 2024 and 2025; considers, given the Union objective of climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest, that the budget devoted to this cluster should be increased;

- reminds that the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was designed to support a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and build resilience against future shocks, notably by supporting the green and digital transition; consequently, Member States are called to devote at least 37 % of their total expenditure to investments and reforms in support of climate objectives;

- emphasises the need to allocate sufficient funding for each individual budget line that contributes to the achievement of the green transition, with a particular focus on sustainability, climate change and biodiversity conservation, such as attention to bees and pollinators’ protection and their role as indicators for healthy ecosystems;

- stresses the need to allocate sufficient funding to the LIFE programme, which supports the protection of nature and biodiversity, the protection and quality improvement of the Union’s air and water, and the transition towards an energy efficient, renewable energy-based, circular, climate neutral and climate resilient economy;

- underlines the importance of the financial means in the Just Transition Fund to support those regions and sectors that are most affected by the Union’s transition away from fossil fuels;

- welcomes the approach of the Commission to start the preparatory activities of the new Social Climate Fund (SCF), established to mitigate the social impacts on vulnerable groups in the Union arising from the extension of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to buildings, road transport and additional types of fuels; underlines the need to monitor the proper implementation of national social climate plans and the national ETS 2 revenue and calls on the Commission to assess whether these are sufficient to fully mitigate the economic impact of ETS 2 on these households and whether stronger protections are needed to prevent increased costs from disproportionately affecting those who are least able to afford them; notes that part of the revenues from the auctioning of emission allowances in ETS2 will supply the SCF;

- welcomes the allocation of funding for the set-up of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) that addresses the risk of carbon leakage, ensuring that domestic production and imports are subject to similar levels of carbon pricing, and encourages producers in third countries to adopt decarbonisation technologies;

- strongly regrets the redeployment from the EU4Health programme of 1 billion EUR over the 2025-2027 period, which is a decrease of almost 20% in the total budget, agreed during the MFF mid-term revision, which includes a reallocation EUR 189 million in 2025 to other budget lines and threatens the programme's ability to achieve its critical objectives; calls on the Commission, Member States and other involved actors to find practical modalities to compensate this cut to ensure that the goal of the fund of building stronger, more resilient and more accessible health systems can be achieved and increase the EU4Health’s funding via different channels, such as through the Flexibility Instrument; furthermore, in the context of the next MFF, strongly advocates a significant increase in funding for healthcare; stresses the need to also allocate sufficient funding for the European Health Data Space (EHDS) to ensure its proper implementation;

- calls, furthermore, for an increase in the budget for the Health Cluster under HorizonEU to support medical research and development in critical areas where market failures exist such as addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and strengthening Europe’s research and development capabilities to tackle emerging, re-emerging, neglected, and rare diseases; stresses that it is imperative to protect health budget lines for the remainder of the MFF by reversing the proposed cuts;

- regrets the cuts of EUR 37 million (commitments) and EUR 154,9 million (payments) in the budget lines for the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (RescEU), especially considering the need to ensure appropriate financing for this instrument in tackling ever worsening extreme weather conditions and the consequential natural disasters such as, inter alia floods and wild fires in the Union; urges that increased funding be allocated for the relevant budget lines;

- welcomes the increase of resources to the European agencies under ENVI’s remit, such as the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a mean to ensure that they can fully carry out their important functions in European policymaking in response to the challenges the Union has been facing; stresses the need for sufficient funding in the long term to enable their proper and effective functioning;

- deplores the cuts made by the Council on various lines affecting actions falling under the ENVI Committee remit, such as cluster “Health”, ECHA, support expenditures for the EU4Health and LIFE programmes as well as lines regarding nature and biodiversity, circular economy and quality of life, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and clean energy transition; and

- reiterates the importance of ensuring an enhanced EU own resources system which is capable of meeting the challenges and contributing to the Union’s health, environment and climate goals.

I have sent a similar letter to Mr Victor Negrescu, general rapporteur for the 2025 budget.

Yours sincerely,

Antonio Decaro

ANNEX: entities or persons

from whom the rapporteur for the OPINION has received input

The Chair in his capacity as 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.