EU funds

Member States are currently developing their EU funds spending plans to demonstrate to the European Commission how they are going to use the unprecedented amounts of EU budget and recovery funds. A campaign by Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, as a part of its Unify project, identifies climate and environmental friendly and harmful practices that 13 Member States and regions plan to finance from the EU’s purse.

The new briefing published by the Unify project partners across Europe underlines the importance of a climate- friendly Common Agriculture Policy to ensure that the agriculture sector contributes to the objectives of the European Green Deal and the EU’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. This document, coming out during the trialogue negotiations between the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council, assesses the weaknesses of the current CAP and explains what needs to happen for the new CAP reform to contribute to the EU’s climate ambition.

This report looks into investments and measures listed in National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP) of 14 Member States. This report highlights which measures have a great potential to boost climate ambition and green recovery, and therefore should be prioritised to receive EU and recovery funding. At the same time the report points out which harmful investments should not be supported by EU funds in order to avoid high-emission lock-in and to prevent biodiversity loss and ecosystems’ degradation/destruction.

To recover from the Covid-19 crisis and fight the climate one, French regions have to implement strong structural policies, making our societies more resilient and sharply reducing greenhouses gas emissions. Unify projet partner, Réseau Action Climat France, calls French regions to use the opportunity of recovery plans to invest in the ecological transition. Supporting low emission mobility, house renovation, the development of renewable energies and the transformation of the industry require the reorientation of all financial tools, including EU funds. This would create new jobs, strengthen the local economy and decrease the level of emissions of these activities. Besides mitigation, regions must begin to adapt to climate change.

This report analyses the 2014-2020 spending programme of French regional authorities and draws recommendations for the remaining 5.9 billion to be spent until the end of 2020 and for the elaboration of the next programmes (for 2021-2027). It also identifies the right priorities and the key sectors to target in a truly ecological recovery plan. The report underlines that French regions do not use EU funds enough for the ecological transition: only 30% of the ERDF envelope is dedicated to sustainable mobility and energy transition, which does not fill the gaps in investment needs and recommends that at least 50% of the European funds, especially the ERDF, should be directed towards the ecological transition for the next EU budget period.

Our new report shows how little EU countries use existing EU regional development funds for this purpose. With the EU budget best placed to support the sustainable economic recovery, Member States must make climate action a much bigger priority of future EU funds spending.