THE BUDGET OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND GREEN ENERGY: PERCEPTIONS, ACTIONS, AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

The European Green Deal has expanded the climate perspective of the European Union (EU) and put a sustainable and environmentally friendly energy strategy at the centre. For the first time in the history of the EU integration, the EU budget has been designed for prioritizing the climate strategy and conditioned in accordance with the climate targets. Within this context, in this study, the common budget priorities, Green Deal targets and internal/external challenges of the EU are addressed together, aiming to answer the questions to what extent the global climate change is perceived as an emergency by the EU and whether the EU’s green transformation approach is sufficient and applicable. The study is conducted in the light of current literature and data on the EU’s climate approach and financing instruments in order to answer these questions. The study concludes that although the climate model reflected in the EU’s new budget is an important step in combating the climate crisis, difficulties could not be overcome due to the intra-EU dynamics/lack of consensus, and unless a systemic transition in a global sense takes place, the dramatic transformation targeted by the Green Deal would remain discursively assertive, but actionally ambiguous.