On the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union Civil Protection Mechanism and Union support for health emergency preparedness and response, and repealing Decision No 1313/2013/EU (Union Civil Protection Mechanism)

4.Stresses the need to distinguish, including for financial planning and monitoring purposes, between the areas of civil protection and of health emergency preparedness and response;

5.Insists that, while flexibility is critical for the achievement of UCPM+ objectives, sufficiently detailed and sound legislation is a condition for proper budgetary decision-making and adequate parliamentary oversight during budget implementation; deplores the lack of a breakdown of the budget of the UCPM+ and the proposed introduction of financing not linked to costs; notes that this would give the Commission great latitude to shift and decide on spending priorities during implementation; recommends giving consideration to fixing indicative sub-envelopes in the basic act in order to enhance predictability in the use of resources, while taking into account the agility or responsiveness of the programme in crisis situations;

6.Deplores the lack of a sufficiently detailed indicative budgetary nomenclature proposed in the Legislative Financial and Digital Statement (LFDS); considers that this will hamper the budgetary authority’s ability to steer accurately policy priorities in the annual budgetary procedure; expresses concerns that the overly aggregated budgetary architecture would dramatically increase the Commission’s discretion in transferring and reallocating resources without a decision from the budgetary authority, and would severely limit parliamentary oversight; recommends, therefore, a more detailed nomenclature that properly reflects the objectives and structure of UCPM+ and enhances transparency, accountability and parliamentary control;

7.Recalls that the budgetary nomenclature must be established in line with Article 47(2) of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2024/2509 (the Financial Regulation), which provides that each title must correspond to a policy area and each chapter, as a rule, to a programme or an activity, in line with the principles of specification, sound financial management and transparency; recommends that the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety and the Committee on Public Health amend the proposal to include an annex defining the nomenclature of the programme; insists that the budgetary nomenclature forms an integral part of Parliament’s negotiating position and must be discussed in interinstitutional negotiations; considers, in this regard, that the revised LFDS must be part of the final political agreement;

8.Recalls, notably, that spending priorities and financial allocations must be determined in the basic act, with full respect for Parliament’s prerogatives as a co-legislator and one arm of the EU’s budgetary authority; suggests, in this regard, that earmarking a separate minimum financial allocation for programmable prevention and preparedness activities in the area of health emergency response, on the one hand, and for activities connected with civil protection, on the other, would meet the regulation’s objective of flexibility while delivering on transparency and predictability;

9.Highlights that, under the current budgetary tightness, the principle of sound financial management plays a critical role in the programming and implementation of measures under UCPM+; points out, in this regard, the necessity of establishing clearly defined competencies for deployment measures through the Emergency Response Coordination Centre to avoid duplication, fragmentation and unnecessary administrative overhead costs;

10.Considers that the reporting frequency of five years should align better with the programming period and ensure sound financial management, and therefore recommends introducing a reporting structure of twice per seven-year period;

11.Highlights the need for enhanced coordination between the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Medicines Agency, and therefore calls on the Commission to clarify their respective responsibilities in order to maximise synergies and avoid overlaps and to ensure the proper implementation of the One Health approach;

12.Strongly underlines the need to grant the necessary rights and full access to the Commission, the European Anti-Fraud Office, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Court of Auditors in order to safeguard the Union’s financial interests in relation to the participation of third countries;

13.Considers that, in order to properly manage the programme funds, the language in Article 12 of the proposal needs to be clarified, since the proposal does not specify whether the work programmes will be annual or multiannual, nor whether separate work programmes will be established for UCPM and health emergency preparedness and response, possibly with different time frames;

14.Takes note of the suggested complementarity between UCPM+ and other programmes such as the European Competitiveness Fund, the National and Regional Partnership Plans and Global Europe; stresses that enhanced complementarity between instruments must not lead to double funding nor come at the expense of traceability of expenditure or the prerogatives of the budgetary authority; underlines that the contribution of UCPM+ to operations financed jointly with other instruments must be explicitly identifiable at all stages of the budgetary cycle; stresses, in this regard, that any such contribution must be duly reflected in the programme performance statement; insists that the budgetary authority retain full control over how resources are combined across instruments and over the effective contribution of each programme to EU priorities, specifically through detailed budgetary nomenclature; stresses that enhanced complementarity between programmes must not lead to disproportionate complexity for beneficiaries; calls for EU funding to be clearer, more accessible and more coherent in order to facilitate uptake and maximise the impact of investments;

15.Stresses that the use of external assigned revenue under UCPM+ must be clearly circumscribed, fully transparent and subject to effective parliamentary scrutiny; takes note, in that regard, of the provisions relating to additional contributions to the programme; recalls the importance of ensuring the traceability of external assigned revenue; underlines that, should the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety and the Committee on Public Health consider amending provisions relating to external assigned revenue, this should be done in coordination with the Committee on Budgets and the other committees in order to ensure a consistent approach;

16.Recalls the proposal for a regulation on establishing a budget expenditure tracking and performance framework and other horizontal rules for the Union programmes and activities (the ‘performance regulation’), which establishes a single streamlined list for performance indicators and monitoring and evaluation provisions, some of which are relevant for UCPM+; underlines that any change to the architecture, objectives and eligible actions under the programme will need to be appropriately reflected in Annex I of the performance regulation, as part of the process of amending and negotiating that regulation, while highlighting that the responsive nature of the programme needs to be taken fully into account in the design of the relevant indicators; points out that, while sectoral legislation can supplement the performance regulation, for instance as regards programme evaluations, it should remain consistent with the provisions of that regulation;

17.Recalls that under Articles 6(2) of the Financial Regulation, a general regime of conditionality applies to the establishment and implementation of the budget in cases of breaches of the rule of law; underlines, furthermore, that Article 6(3) of the same regulation requires the Member States and the Commission, in the implementation of the budget, to ensure compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and respect the values on which the EU is founded, as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.