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An Investment of 620 Billion Euros a Year to Achieve Climate Neutrality and Independence from Russian Fuel
The European Commission Prepares for a Sustainable Transition in Ten Moves
620 Billion Euro per Year for Neutrality
In its Strategic Foresight Report, the European Commission has outlined the path and steps needed to achieve the goal of sustainability and prosperity in the coming decades. The document identifies ten actions necessary for a sustainable future in Europe.
The different actions foresee a new European social contract and new welfare policies with a focus on higher quality social services, the fine-tuning of the single market to foster a resilient and emission-free economy with a focus on open strategic autonomy and economic security, the enhancement of Europe’s global supply side with greater cooperation with key partners, the integration of greater sustainability with production and consumption, and the increase of European investments through public action to catalyse financial flows for transition, the need to make public budgets even more sustainable also with the help of an efficient tax framework and public spending, the encouragement of sustainable and inclusive welfare through targeted policy actions, the need to increase citizen participation in relation to the labour market with a focus on future skills, the strengthening of democracy by putting generational equity at the heart of policies and with the integration of civil protection and its instruments to prepare and respond to the needs of the Europe of the future.
The whole of Europe will be engaged in a profound and ambitious transition towards climate neutrality and sustainability in the coming decades, and the achievement of these goals will be crucial to strengthen the EU’s open strategic autonomy, to ensure its competitiveness, to sustain its social market economy model and to consolidate its global leadership in the new green economy.
It will require a paradigm shift in the calculation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with economic indicators that take into account well-being, including in relation to health and the environment.
In order to achieve the goals of the Green Deal, to achieve EU climate neutrality by 2050 and the RepowerEU plan, and to eliminate dependence on Russian fossil fuels never more necessary than in these times of great geopolitical instability, the European Commission, in its Strategic Foresight Report, supports the need for an investment of EUR 620 billion per year. The largest part of the funds to be allocated will necessarily have to come from private financing, but the budgets of the EU states will still play an important role. The European Parliament would already be ready to approve expenditure of around EUR 578 billion, or at least 30 per cent of its budget, to initiate major climate actions in a timeframe up to 2027.
The European Commission’s choice of substantial new funding is dictated by the objective need to face different challenges in the coming decades, which include geopolitical changes that have already started in the past few years to the development of a new economic model, centred on the wellbeing of people and nature. The growing need for appropriate and useful skills for a sustainable future remains compelling and will serve to ensure the EU’s future competitiveness, as will the transition to sustainability, which requires substantial investment from both the public and private sectors. The Strategic Foresight Report for 2023 will be presented to the EU Member States at the General Affairs Council in mid-July, while in November the Commission will organise, together with the European Parliament, the annual conference of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (Espas), where the results of the Global Trends Report, prepared by the EU institutions to reflect on the way forward, can be reviewed and discussed.