The European Commission's methodologies for tracking climate-related and biodiversity-related expenditure in the EU budget contain a number of weaknesses, according to a study commissioned by the European Parliament's Committee on Budgets (BUDG) and carried out by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP).
The study was presented to the members of the BUDG Committee on 31 August. Amongst other findings, it concludes that the current methodology “relies on approximations” and lacks a “systematic approach to identifying the nature and scale of impacts that the expenditure aims to achieve”.
Consequently, the methodology “does not always appear to identify the expenditure which genuinely has the greatest impact on delivering climate benefits”.
Based on these observations, which are quite similar to the conclusions of a recent report by the European Court of Auditors (see EUROPE 12519/10), the IEEP recommends an approach based on including expenditure within the climate and biodiversity tracking systems only where it has “clear, verifiable targets” for the delivery of climate and biodiversity outcomes.
The study can be found at: https://bit.ly/3gIPBUF (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)