Brussels Wants at Least €53B for European Agriculture in 2023

While the econ­omy, global food secu­rity cri­sis and European energy cri­sis are the main pri­or­i­ties of the lat­est European Commission bud­get, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture also has a promi­nent place.

Brussels has asked the European Union’s 27 mem­ber states to agree to a €186 bil­lion bud­get, of which almost €54 bil­lion will fund the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The new CAP will also receive slightly more than €1 bil­lion from the European Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund.

According to a state­ment from the com­mis­sion, a rel­e­vant part of the CAP funds will be used to strengthen the resilience of agri-food and fish­eries at a very chal­leng­ing moment, char­ac­ter­ized by expected global food sup­ply short­ages. Crisis man­age­ment and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture will be the main focus of strength­en­ing this resilience.

See Also:Europe’s New Sustainable Ag Policies Will Make Foods Even More Expensive, Farmers Warn

Significant funds in the new bud­get also will be ded­i­cated to com­bat­ing cli­mate change, ​“in line with the tar­get to spend 30 per­cent of the long-term bud­get and the Next Generation E.U. recov­ery instru­ment on this pol­icy pri­or­ity.”

The E.U. draft bud­get also includes an esti­mated €114 bil­lion in grants under the Next Generation E.U. umbrella.

“Next Generation E.U. helps the E.U. recover from the imme­di­ate eco­nomic and social dam­age caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­demic and enables us to respond to cur­rent and future crises such as the war in Ukraine,” the com­mis­sion wrote. ​“The tem­po­rary instru­ment helps build a post-Covid-19 E.U. that is greener, more dig­i­tal, more resilient and bet­ter fit for the cur­rent and forth­com­ing chal­lenges.”

Slightly more than €46 bil­lion of the 2023 bud­get will go to regional devel­op­ment and cohe­sion projects, which also com­prise infra­struc­ture for the green tran­si­tion. The E.U. will also invest €14 bil­lion in sup­port­ing its global part­ners in a series of devel­op­ment pro­grams and human­i­tar­ian aid.

With nearly €14 bil­lion, the European Union will con­tinue financ­ing research and inno­va­tion projects within the Horizon Europe pro­gram, includ­ing projects focused on bio-econ­omy, food, nat­ural resources, agri­cul­ture and the envi­ron­ment.

The pro­gram’s goals are to reduce envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, reverse the decline of Europe’s bio­di­ver­sity and more effi­ciently man­age nat­ural resources.

Another €5 bil­lion of the pro­posed bud­get will go toward European strate­gic invest­ments, includ­ing green and dig­i­tal tran­si­tion and strate­gic research and tech­nol­ogy.

Slightly more than €2 bil­lion will go to the envi­ron­ment and cli­mate action, includ­ing €728 mil­lion for the LIFE Resilience pro­gram, the research ini­tia­tive focused on cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion.

Other por­tions of the bud­get will go to space research, E.U. bor­der pro­tec­tion, migra­tion-spend­ing sup­port, defense, sup­port for the cor­rect devel­op­ment of the sin­gle mar­ket and health. A new project will also be funded to improve E.U. satel­lite link secu­rity.

While pre­sent­ing the new bud­get, which will have to be approved by the E.U. mem­ber states, Brussels has also hinted at the pos­si­bil­ity that fur­ther funds might be needed to respond to the crit­i­cal con­se­quences of the Russian inva­sion of Ukraine.