Strategies and Instruments for Climate Proofing the EU Budget

The EU budget is a core policy tool of European governance and can have significant multiplier effects in important policy areas such as energy or transport. The mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change has become increasingly central to the European policy agenda, and is currently enshrined in the overarching Europe 2020 Strategy and its Flagship initiatives. Achieving a broader transition to a greener economy and ensuring the efficient use of resources are emerging as key future challenges and will have significant implications for current and future investment patterns. This report therefore advances the conceptual understanding of the concept of climate proofing the EU budget and offers ways to operationalise it in the debate on the post-2013 Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF). It examines different policy options to turn the EU budget into an effective tool for climate and environmental governance. The study finds that dedicated climate change spending needs to increase in order to match European policy ambitions in the area of climate change. Improving the quality of spending will also be important in order to avoid the trap of off-setting positive impacts in one area with negative impacts in another. Improving policy coherence, increasing results-orientation and tightening performance checks are critical challenges that upcoming negotiations starting this year will need to address. The IEEP study offers a detailed account of relevant instruments that could address some of these challenges and includes suggestions for their practical implementation.

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