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

1.9.2025

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on the 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 Women's Rights and Gender Equality 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. It considered the matter at its meeting of 1 September 2025 and adopted the opinion at that meeting.

Yours sincerely,

Lina Gálvez

OPINION

A. Whereas gender equality is a core value of the Union enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union; whereas Article 8 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states that ‘in all its activities, the Union shall aim to eliminate inequalities and to promote equality’ establishing the principle of gender mainstreaming;

1. Welcomes the application of gender equality mainstreaming in the budget and reiterates that it should be applied as a cross-cutting principle; urges that monitoring of the application of gender equality mainstreaming must be effective and timely, leading to proactive corrective action, without creating undue administrative burden; highlights that gender equality mainstreaming should not be in conflict with competitiveness mainstreaming, as the budget work must work for all;

2. Acknowledges that gender budgeting was applied to all spending programmes in the annual budget in 2025: calls for the effective and systematic implementation of gender budgeting in 2026 to ensure that resources are distributed equitably and that spending supports gender equality:

3. Recognises the increase in funding for the vital Daphne Programme; underlines the importance of allocating at least 5% of the total budget to policies to combat violence against women, including victims of sexual exploitation and human trafficking, prevention and help for victims and survivors, including but not limited to the requirements of the Violence against Women Directive; applauds the Daphne Programme’s efficiency, which should serve as further reason for increased budget allocations as well as a template for sound financial use of the EU budget; recognises that this programme is a priority; recalls that one in three women in the Union has been affected by gender-based violence, at an estimated economic cost of EUR 290 billion per year; calls for special attention to women facing intersectional discrimination; underlines the need for DAPHNE to become an autonomous programme with a separate budget line;

4. Recalls the important role played by EIGE in understanding and addressing the extent and causes of gender inequality affecting women in all their diversity in the Union; notes the increase in funding for EIGE; nevertheless, stresses the need for an increase in staff, including at least 7 temporary agents, and funding commensurate to the increased tasks of EIGE included in recently adopted legislation and due to increased requests for technical assistance; underlines EIGE’s crucial role in providing valuable data, research and expertise on gender equality and women’s rights to the EU institutions and beyond; underlines that EIGE is an independent EU agency and as such must be properly funded; considers this to be a funding priority;

5. Highlights the ongoing backlash against gender equality and women’s rights and the importance of EU funding matching the EU’s values, including for supporting civil society organisations promoting women’s rights and gender equality, both within the EU and in its externals actions;

6. Calls for budgetary allocations under the EU4Health programme for research into gender specific conditions such as menopause, infertility issues, and endometriosis and fibroids, with an intersectional perspective, the provision of universal healthcare, along with the provision of cross-border services to ensure the provision of free, safe and legal abortion and other sexual and reproductive health services to women in all their diversity and LGBTI; stresses that women in the EU must enjoy equal access to goods and services, including medical care; stresses that SRHR are fundamental rights and a precondition of gender equality and must be placed at the heart of health policy;

7. Stresses the importance of using European Structural and Investment Funds such as the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) to promote gender equality;

8. Calls on the Commission to further develop and improve the collection of gender-disaggregated equality data, as paucity of data leads to poor decisions, evaluations and outcomes; stresses that the EU must ensure that budget should never undermine gender equality.

ANNEX: DECLARATION OF INPUT

Pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure, the Chair declares that she included in her opinion input on matters pertaining to the subject of the file that she received, in the preparation of the opinion, from the following interest representatives falling within the scope of the Interinstitutional Agreement on a mandatory transparency register, or from the following representatives of public authorities of third countries, including their diplomatic missions and embassies:

The list above is drawn up under the exclusive responsibility of the Chair

Where natural persons are identified in the list by their name, by their function or by both, the Chair declares that she has submitted to the natural persons concerned the European Parliament's Data Protection Notice No 484 (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/data-protect/index.do), which sets out the conditions applicable to the processing of their personal data and the rights linked to that processing.