The EU’s long-term budget, the so called Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), sets the spending priorities for the annual EU budgets over a seven-year period. It greatly translates the EU policy objectives into action. It defines objectives, priorities and conditions of EU funding respectively the policies EU funds are supposed to finance.
The EU budget 2021 – 2027 is critically important to deliver the long-term climate goals of the EU, including the revamped 2030 climate and energy targets and climate neutrality by 2040.
The 2014-2020 EU budget had some important climate-relevant features such as “climate mainstreaming”, the strategic link to the EU 2020 climate and energy framework or the political target to spend 20% of the EU budget on climate action. However, fossil fuels still received support from the EU budget, and competing priorities and incoherent implementation of climate action are sweeping off the climate credits of the EU budget. Overall its full potential to catalyse the clean energy transformation in Europe remained largely untapped.
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