On the eve of an extraordinary European Council on the future 2021-2027 EU budget, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the largest network of environmental and climate NGOs, has launched an urgent appeal to Member State governments to give the EU the means to respond to the urgency of the climate and ecological crisis.
The EEB considers this summit to be crucial, as it will determine whether the EU can finance its transition to climate neutrality, and has written to the leaders asking them: - to allocate at least 40% of the overall budget to climate and nature; - to stop funding environmentally harmful activities, including new gas infrastructure and intensive farming; - to provide details on how funding requests will contribute to the objectives of the EU Green Deal; - to improve governance and monitoring of how EU funds are spent and their impact.
“This is one of Europe’s very last chances to reverse the climate crisis. EU governments have a moral and political obligation to ensure a credible and ambitious climate budget. We cannot afford to continue wasting taxpayers’ money on business practices that lock Europe into carbon emissions and destroy our natural resources”, says Patrick ten Brink of the EEB. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)