| Facing accusations the EU is no longer serious about its green agenda, Ursula von der Leyen has promised that a third of her €2 trillion mega budget will go on climate and biodiversity policies. In reality, that pledge is already up in smoke, with a major shortcoming of current climate mainstreaming unaddressed. The Commission wants to increase the EU budget to just shy of €2 trillion starting 2028, up from €1.2 trillion in the seven years to 2027. And 35% of that – or one euro in every three, as an EU official told reporters today – must have a positive effect on the climate and biodiversity. Great news for the planet, you might think. But even before MEPs and governments get to work on the bill, it's unclear whether von der Leyen's green promise stands up given the clauses, caveats, and coefficients that muddy the water. For example, for every €100 of EU money spent on a new runway or the extension of an airport terminal, for example, €40 is deemed to have been spent on climate adaptation. On the other hand, if that €100 is ploughed into the protection and restoration of wetland and peatlands – which unlike the above example is unarguably a climate and biodiversity-positive intervention – it is counted three times: once for climate mitigation, once for climate adaptation and once for environmental restoration. Even in the admittedly unlikely event that the whole of von der Leyen’s €2 trillion went into airport runways, the 35% target would be easily overshot by 5 percentage points. This scope for double, or triple counting is nothing new: it already exists in the current 30% climate-only mainstreaming target, and a 37.5% target was attached to the post-Covid recovery fund – a fact that has drawn criticism from the EU’s budget watchdog already. The European Court of Auditors concluded last year that “some projects tagged as green were found to lack a direct link to the green transition upon closer inspection”. What we also know is that the LIFE programme – the only one directly funding nature projects on the ground – is gone. At least in theory, it has been absorbed into a €234 billion European Competitiveness Fund. Although there are various EU laws requiring governments to try and halt biodiversity loss – a thing that decades of targets and nature legislation consistently failed to do – the modest €5.4 billion of the current €1.2 trillion budget is no longer ring-fenced. | 