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

23.7.2026

Mr Johan Van Overtveldt

Chair

Committee on Budgets

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on 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 Budgetary Control has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee.

The EP Reform 2024 emphasised, inter alia, that the budgetary and discharge procedures are linked, and that results of the discharge procedure should naturally feed back into the budgetary procedure, and vice-versa. The CONT Committee considers that the resolutions of the discharge procedure for 2024, adopted in plenary in April 2026, contain several observations and recommendations relevant for the budgetary procedure 2027.

The Committee on Budgetary Control considered the matter at its meeting of 14 July 2026 and decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter and call on the Committee on Budgets, as the committee responsible, to incorporate the following suggestions into its motion for a resolution. This opinion, in the form of a letter, should be read in conjunction with the budgetary amendments tabled by the Committee on Budgetary Control.

Yours sincerely,

Andreas Schwab Daniel Freund

CONT Chair Rapporteur for the Commission Discharge 2024

1.Reaffirms its strong commitment to the fundamental principles and values enshrined in the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU); underlines that the EU’s financial interests are to be protected and its actions to be carried out in accordance with the general principles embedded in the Treaties, in particular the values enshrined in Articles 1, 2, 10 and 11 TEU and Article 15 TFEU, and with the principle of sound financial management enshrined in Article 317 TFEU and in the Financial Regulation;

2.Considers that the development of genuine new own resources is essential to ensure that debt repayment does not come at the expense of the EU’s policy priorities under future multiannual financial frameworks;

3.Notes with concern the shortcomings affecting the rule of law, anti-corruption frameworks and institutional checks and balances in some Member States, which pose risks to the protection of the financial interests of the EU and the sound management of EU funds; emphasises, in this respect, the importance of the rule of law conditionality mechanism for the protection of the EU budget; calls on the Commission to continue to address the breaches of the principles of the rule of law in accordance with the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation when they affect or seriously impact the EU’s financial interests; recalls that the Commission has a wide range of instruments at its disposal to address such risks and protect the EU budget; stresses that these instruments should be used in a coherent, consistent, objective and transparent manner; underlines, therefore, the importance of clear benchmarks, verifiable implementation steps and effective monitoring when applying measures under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation and the Common Provisions Regulation, as well as any other EU funding instruments, in order to ensure legal certainty and alignment with the Commission’s annual rule of law reports; recalls its position that funds suspended pursuant to the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation or due to non-fulfilment of horizontal enabling conditions should not be eligible for programme amendments or transfers;

4.Emphasises that EU funds must not be allocated to activities undermining democracy, the rule of law or other EU values, or fundamental rights; recognises the important role played by relevant stakeholders in safeguarding the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights; stresses that EU funding provided to stakeholders should be transparent, subject to accountability and oversight mechanisms, and implemented in full compliance with the principles of sound financial management and the Financial Regulation; recalls, in this regard, the recommendation made by the discharge authority in its resolution on discharge to the Commission for the financial year 2024 as regards compliance with the principles of a transparent, evidence-based and inclusive lawmaking process; stresses the need to fully implement all Commission discharge recommendations, including those on EU4Health;

5.Stresses the importance of further simplifying EU funding programmes while maintaining a high level of financial control; calls on the Commission to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens for final beneficiaries without weakening safeguards against fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest;

6.Calls on the Commission to continue strengthening the prevention and management of conflicts of interest, including through greater transparency of beneficial ownership information and effective risk-based controls across all management modes;

7.Recalls the importance of making use of new technologies in order to protect the EU budget against fraud and the misuse of funds; urges the Commission to accelerate the deployment of interoperable anti-fraud, risk-scoring and data mining tools across management modes, enabling cross-checks on beneficial ownership, procurement risk indicators and double funding signals; reiterates the urgent need for the wider use of data mining and artificial intelligence tools, where appropriate and in compliance with EU data protection rules, to effectively combat fraud and irregularities; expects the interoperable risk-scoring and data mining tool based on ARACHNE to be fully running by the end of 2027, in accordance with the agreement reached during the recast of the Financial Regulation;

8.Underlines the importance of transparency, including under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, and reiterates that full and reliable information on the final recipients is essential to prevent the misuse of funds, detect fraud and ensure equal standards of accountability across all management modes and all Member States;

9.Welcomes the Commission’s work on the Single Gateway and stresses the importance of ensuring its timely development and full operational readiness by 1 January 2028; emphasises that the information available through the Single Gateway should be updated in real time, or as soon as information becomes available, be presented in a user-friendly manner and allow the extraction of data relating to specific reporting periods and time frames, including through historic snapshots, in order to facilitate effective monitoring, risk assessment, audit and scrutiny; stresses that the Single Gateway should make available the broadest possible range of data, and that any restrictions on data availability should be strictly necessary and duly justified in line with the relevant provisions of EU law; recalls, furthermore, the importance of ensuring the reliability and quality of the performance data available through the Single Gateway by establishing robust data governance arrangements, including clear rules on the interoperability of IT systems, record-keeping, minimum verification requirements and responsibilities for ensuring data quality;

10.Recalls the essential role that the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) continues to play in the protection of the EU’s budget expenditure and revenues, notably through its administrative investigations focusing on preventing money from being unduly spent or making recommendations for financial recovery, as well as through detecting, reporting, supporting and coordinating activities in the area of customs fraud; welcomes the announcement that OLAF has been assigned the task of closely monitoring financial recoveries to the EU budget, including as a follow-up to notifications from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), but regrets that no new posts have been allocated to these tasks and, moreover, that the draft budget for 2027 continues to reduce the number of OLAF statutory posts; calls, therefore, on the Commission to provide OLAF with the necessary statutory staff resources to fulfil its mission; considers, in this regard, that an increase of EUR 512 000 in OLAF’s budget for 2027 is justified, as reflected in the corresponding budgetary amendment (CONT/3);

11.Considers that the EPPO is an indispensable component of the EU anti-fraud architecture; notes with concern the recent attempts to limit the EPPO’s ability to carry out its mandate in some Member States and calls on the Commission to ensure that the principle of sincere cooperation as laid out in Article 4(3) TEU is at all times respected; reiterates that the EPPO should be provided with the necessary resources to guarantee its full operational independence and carry out its mandate, especially given the increasing number of investigations and high estimated damages; notes the amount assigned to the EPPO in the 2027 draft budget of EUR 99 737 568 in commitment and payment appropriations; further notes the EPPO’s estimate that, compared to the 2027 draft budget, additional funds are required to cover its staffing needs; considers that an increase of EUR 3.16 million in the EPPO’s budget for 2027 is justified, as reflected in the corresponding budgetary amendments (CONT/2 and CONT/4);

12.Notes the intention of two additional Member States to join the EPPO in 2027, with the possibility for retrospective investigations; stresses that the accession of additional Member States will require not only adequate funding for European Delegated Prosecutors (EDPs), but also sufficient reinforcement of the EPPO’s central office with the necessary operational and administrative support staff, including translators and interpreters, to ensure that the EPPO functions effectively; considers that, in view of the possible accessions to EPPO in 2027, the Commission should ensure that the EPPO is equipped with the necessary resources also through amendments to the 2026 budget;

13.Emphasises that the activities of the EPPO must contribute to the protection of the EU’s financial interests and are expected to result in the recovery of amounts disbursed from the EU’s budget that were not used for their intended purpose on account of criminal activities; observes that the confiscation process, allowing the recovery of such amounts, is carried out by the national authorities and that the relevant confiscated amounts, or asset value, resulting from measures adopted by the EDPs in the Member States should be returned to the EU budget after the deduction of costs incurred by the Member States’ authorities in implementing those measures in accordance with Article 38 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1939 referring to assets or proceeds to be disposed of in accordance with applicable national law without prejudice to the rights of the Union or other victims to be compensated for damage that they have suffered; reiterates its position that the potential revenue resulting from seizing and confiscating measures is to be accounted for in the EU budget as non-assigned revenue, under a separate budget line, as created by budgetary amendment CONT/1; deems it necessary to amend Article 38 to make possible its effective implementation and monitoring, in order to ensure the protection of the EU budget and invites the Commission to assess whether the current legal framework provides adequate mechanisms for ensuring the effective return of recovered amounts to the EU budget and to propose the necessary legislative improvements to recover the EU funds affected by fraud.