Opinion on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 - all sections

10.9.2026

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027 - all sections (2026/0196(BUD))

Dear Mr Chair,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 6 May 2026, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter.

The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy considered the matter at its meeting of 10 September 2026. At that meeting, it decided to call on the Committee on Budgets, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution.

Yours sincerely,

Borys Budka

Chair

1. Recalls the ITRE committee opinion on the guidelines for the 2027 Budget, which called for an ambitious EU Budget reflecting the challenges facing Europe such as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and hybrid attacks on Member States' critical infrastructure, the crisis in the Middle East and rising energy prices, and the need for investment in industrial competitiveness and quality jobs, twin clean and digital transition, technological sovereignty, critical raw materials, energy independence, and the defence industry, as well as sustained support for Ukraine;

2. Underlines the need to develop a more resilient and competitive industrial base in the Union and calls on the Council to support an EU budget allocating the necessary investment; notes the external dependencies of the Union in areas of key strategic and economic interest, such as critical raw materials, energy, digital and defence technologies; calls for these vulnerabilities to be addressed; looks forward to an EU Critical Materials Centre, for which the Commission should make funding and staff available already from the 2027 budget;

3. Underlines the need to ensure the security of energy supply for Europe; stresses the need to rapidly phase out all remaining energy imports from Russia, and to reduce overall the EU's dependence on fossil fuels; calls therefore for continued investments in resilient energy infrastructure, electrification, industrial decarbonisation, energy efficiency measures and in affordable homegrown renewable and clean energy production, and supply chains in Europe, to deepen the EU energy market;

4. Therefore, calls for an increase to the Connecting Europe Facility – Energy programme by 50 million euros compared to the Commission’s draft budget, in support of continued investments in high-performance, sustainable, and cross-border energy infrastructure and cross-border renewable energy projects, in particular addressing the need to increase grid capacity, flexibility and energy storage facilities; strongly rejects the proposed decrease of commitments in the Council’s position (-10.0 million euros) to this budget; calls for increased funding of 1.05 million Euros under the LIFE Clean Energy Transition sub-programme, which contributes to empowering consumers and energy communities, thereby tackling energy poverty;

5. Reiterates the call for adequate support for fundamental and applied research to foster collaborative research and facilitate the scale-up and commercialisation of research results; strongly regrets the cuts proposed by the Council to research and innovation (-312.1 million euros) of which -231.4 million euros to Horizon Europe, which contradicts the conclusions of the Draghi report deploring insufficient focus on breakthrough innovation; welcomes the 760.30 million euros allocated to Cluster “Health” in the draft budget, as publichealth research and investments in health innovations and technologies are crucial for the EU to remain at the scientific forefront of human health; deplores therefore the cuts proposed by the Council to this budget line (-74.50 million euros); recalls the Parliament insisted on Cluster “Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society” spending at least 45 % on the Cultural and Creative Industries; regrets that the Commission has failed to translate the significant budgetary increase for this Cluster into the expected amount of spending dedicated to cultural and creative industries; believes that in such cases, when the Commission does not respect its political commitments regarding the allocation of funds within budget lines, it is appropriate for the respective funds to be held in reserve;

6. Rejects the Council cuts to the Cluster “Climate Energy and Mobility” and the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking; recalls Article 16(5) of the Horizon Regulation, underlining the importance of the principle of ensuring that participation from associated countries does not come at the expense of European researchers; welcomes the appropriations for the Euratom Research and Training Programmes, especially considering the need for innovative developments in small modular reactors;

7. Requests adequate support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), mid-caps and start-ups, including greater assistance for them to scale up and compete globally;

8. Takes note of the Digital Europe Programme appropriations in the draft budget, in support of accelerating the digital transformation of society and the economy; welcomes the significant increase compared to 2026 in commitments towards skills (+70.8 million euros), acknowledging the need for digital skills build-up and workforce reskilling across Europe; supports the proposed increase for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the rollout of AI, cloud and computing capacity, in light of the need for a strong EU-based energy efficient AI-sector, as well as rapid adoption of AI by other sectors; considers that an adequate budget should be allocated for cybersecurity, given the increased AI-driven cyber threats the Union is facing; ask therefore for 5 million euros increase for cybersecurity rejects the Council’s position to decrease commitments to the budget for skills by -33.0 million euros, Artificial Intelligence by -11.0 million euros and by -12.6 million euros for EuroHPC, which risk deepening Europe’s dependence on foreign providers of computing capacity and AI models

9. Welcomes the Commission’s draft budget appropriations for Heading 5 – defence (+ 13,42 % in CA); calls for an increase of 5 million Euros in commitments for defence research, key for funding collaborative, cross-border research and development of innovative defence and dual-use technologies;

10. Welcomes the AGILE (Accelerating Groundbreaking Innovation for Defence in Europe) programme aiming to enhance the EU’s capacity to deliver defence innovation more rapidly and effectively; regrets that this new initiative will be financed from reallocations from existing space and defence programmes and therefore does not constitute entirely new EU funds;

11. Recalls the importance of the Union’s space programmes for security, to drive innovation and technological sovereignty and to support climate action; deplores the Council’s position to decrease by -10.0 million euros in commitments the Copernicus programme;

12. Calls on the European Commission and the Council to provide adequate funding and staff for all Union agencies and bodies in the policy areas of industry, research, space, energy and cybersecurity, in order to properly carry out their activities;

The rapporteur for opinion declares under his exclusive responsibility that he did not include in his opinion input from interest representatives falling within the scope of the Interinstitutional Agreement on a mandatory transparency register, or from representatives of public authorities of third countries, including their diplomatic missions and embassies, to be listed in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.