The EU’s next long-term budget should clearly include an indicator for monitoring expenditure devoted to biodiversity. According to several sources, this request – backed in recent days by several countries, including France and Germany – has indeed been retained by the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU.
Such an indicator, a priori also supported in the European Parliament, should therefore, in all likelihood, be added to the regulation on evaluating the performance of the EU’s post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework. “It is not expected to disappear from the final compromise insofar as no Member State has spoken out against it”, a European diplomat said on Friday 29 May.
A biodiversity-specific monitoring system already exists in the 2021–2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). However, this had disappeared in favour of a broader indicator devoted to “environment-related” expenditure (covering biodiversity, pollution prevention, water and the circular economy) in the European Commission’s initial proposal for the 2028–2034 period.
While the return of this specific indicator appears to command consensus, the EU27 have not, at this stage, agreed on adding a fully fledged biodiversity spending target, which is advocated by France, in particular.
In the new MFF, the European Commission has proposed merging the spending targets for climate action, on the one hand, and biodiversity, on the other. An overall target of 35% of the budget would have to be directed towards climate and environmental objectives.
This proposal goes hand in hand with the dismantling of the LIFE programme, as planned by the European Commission (see EUROPE 13737/14). With a budget of €5.43 billion over the 2021–2027 period, LIFE was the only MFF instrument exclusively dedicated to the environment. The programme therefore finances projects relating to biodiversity, the circular economy and the energy transition, often involving local and regional levels.
According to the European Commission’s initial draft, funding for “LIFE actions” would be distributed across several programmes, including the future Competitiveness Fund, without any real certainty as to the amounts involved. At the end of April, the European Parliament came out in favour of a guarantee of “continuity of funding” allocated to LIFE. For its part, the EU Council has not yet taken a decision on this point. (Original version in French by Clément Solal)