Insight
The EU budget needs climate-proofing by John Springford 4 November 2019
Greenhouse gas emissions from Europe’s farms have been flat since 2005. The Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes 37 per cent of the EU’s budget, subsidises a sector that needs to clean up its act. For all the talk about Europe’s climate leadership, the EU budget is remarkably dirty. The EU has spent far more of its 2014-2020 budget on subsidies to high-emissions sectors of the economy than it has on combating climate change. This is despite the EU spending 20 per cent of its seven-year budget on climate action by the end of 2020. The negotiations over the next budget (the multiannual financial framework, or MFF), which will run between 2021 and 2027, are reaching a critical phase, with final sign-off by the European Council expected in June next year. The European Commission proposes that 25 per cent of the next budget should be spent on climate action, which is remarkably unambitious. More radical change is needed before the EU budget can be considered a contributor to the fight against climate change. The EU has made important strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Chart 1). Since 1990, emissions have fallen by a little over a fifth across the Union as a whole. The biggest falls were in member-states in Central and Eastern Europe (apart from Poland), which is not surprising, given the rapid decline of inefficient heavy industry after the Berlin Wall fell, and the replacement of dirty energy infrastructure constructed in the communist era. The UK has also made big strides, but from a fairly high base: its greenhouse gas emissions are now only slightly higher than Sweden and Denmark. The laggards are Austria, Malta, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus, whose emissions have risen since 1990.
CER INSIGHT: The EU budget needs climate-proofing 4 November 2019
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