The EU's objective of earmarking at least 20% of its budget (or one euro in every five) for climate actions over the period 2014-2020 is very unlikely to be met, the European Court of Auditors stated in a special report published on Tuesday 22 November.
The auditors noted that ambitious work was underway and that overall, progress had been made towards the achievement of the 20% target. However, this is not likely to be met "without more effort to tackle climate change", the report reads.
The Court finds that the measures taken to this effect have led to greater and more targeted financing of climate actions under the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund. However, as regards the European Social Fund and the fields of agriculture, rural development and fisheries, "there has been no significant shift towards climate action and not all potential opportunities for financing climate-related action have been fully explored", according to the Court.
18.9% over the whole period. According to the Commission's figures, the share of financing devoted to climate action stood at an average of 17.6% between 2014 and 2016. The Commission forecasts that the contribution to climate action over the period 2014-2020 will be 18.9%, consequently a rate that falls short of the 20% target.
The Court found that the rate of financing of the work to tackle climate change should rise to an average of 22% over the rest of the current programming period (years 2017 to 2020) in order for the overall objective of 20% to be achieved before the end of 2020. According to the auditors, there are serious risks in this regard in the main contributory fields, which are agriculture, rural development and research.
If the assessed contribution of agriculture and rural development was calculated in accordance with international established methodologies for assessing levels of climate finance, it would be reduced by up to approximately €33 billion. This responds to around 15% of the overall objective.
As for research, the programme Horizon 2020, with a contribution currently representing 24% of its budget, is a long way off the target of 35% it was supposed to allocate to climate action. The Commission has no detailed action plan outlining plans to plug this gap.
The Commission is also criticised for failing to draw a distinction between attenuation and adaptation measures, thereby complicating the assessment of the financing level of these different approaches to the fight against climate change.
A more cautious approach. In order to reflect the contribution made by conditionality (of direct agricultural aid) towards achieving climate objectives, rhe Commission has proposed a more cautious approach, whereby the share of direct non-ecological payments to be taken into account would have been 10% rather than 20%. This would have led to a lower contribution of the direct agricultural payments to climate action. The contribution would have been reduced by €9 billion, from €47.1 billion to €38 billion. If the prudence principle defined by the World Bank had been applied, "the Commission should have taken into account the lower climate contribution", the Court's report reads.
In the assessment of the rural development programmes of the member states, the Court found that the approach adopted by the Commission had led to more expenditure qualifying as climate action-relevant than would have been the case if each measure had been assessed separately and classified in line with international standards. In the light of this finding, the Court revised the climate coefficients and estimated the revised amount of financing for the fight against climate change from the EAFRD fund for the whole of the EU over the period 2014-2020. "Our estimates suggested that the EAFRD climate figures should be reduced by 42%, or by €23.9 billion", the report reads (€33.3 billion according to the Court's estimates, compared to €57.2 billion according to the Commission). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)