Opinion on Guidelines for the 2025 Budget –Section III

24.1.2024

Mr Johan Van OvertveldtChair

Committee on Budget

BRUSSELS

Subject: Opinion on Guidelines for the 2025 Budget –Section III (2023/2220(BUI))

Dear Mr Johan Van Overtveldt,

Under the procedure referred to above, the Committee on Culture and Education has been asked to submit an opinion to your committee. At its meeting of 28 November 2023, the committee decided to send the opinion in the form of a letter. It considered the matter at its meeting of 24 January 2024 and adopted the opinion at that meeting.

The Committee on Culture and Education:

Insists on simplification, administrative efficiency and synergies with other funding programmes and on fresh money to improve the overall success rate of Erasmus+, Creative Europe, European Solidarity Corps (ESC), and the third strand of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV).

Stresses that learning mobility grants in Erasmus+ should cover increases in living costs to ensure widely accessible and inclusive participation. Calls for financial stability for the European Universities initiative and the Teacher Academies, together with the allocation of dedicated funding to the European Education Area (EEA) in the future. Calls for increased synergies between the EEA, the Digital Education Action Plan and the European Skills Agenda. Warns against cuts to the programme: the disappointing results obtained in the latest round of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) can only be reversed by investing in education.

Calls for an increase in the 2025 Creative Europe's budget to avoid the detrimental impact that frontloading in the first half of the financial cycle could have on the second half. Notes that the current financial allocation cannot meet the high demand for projects. Stresses the importance of maintaining a balance between the strands: calls for the adequate financing of the music sector, and of the European Capitals of Culture by increasing the Melina Mercouri Prize (Culture strand), the support of the cross-border circulation of European films, of cinemas and of video games (Media strand) and of quality journalism and media literacy (Cross-sectorial strand).

Calls for the secretariat of the future European Board for Media Services to be resourced adequately, in line with the future European Media Freedom Act. Reiterates the long-standing Parliament’s call for a permanent EU editorial and news media fund.

Stresses the need for increased funding for the ESC programme, which is massively oversubscribed by young people, as a flat-rate budget increase would not be adequate to mitigate inflation rates and would curtail the participating organisations’ ability to comply with the highest standards and inclusion measures set out in the programme; given the opportunities it offers to young people and its promotion of European values, emphasizes the need for securing regular funding for label holders over several years, increase the financial support and ensure greater flexibility among the project strands to face the increasing requests for solidarity after recurrent crises.

Emphasises that a proportionate and increased budget should be foreseen, as Citizen’s engagement in the CERV programme is crucial to address the social polarisation, the low institutional trust, the democratic backsliding, the erosion of the rule of law, the shrinking space for civil society, and the instrumentalisation of Euroscepticism.

Urges the Commission to support the system of European schools to enable high teaching standards and increase the exchange of best practices with national educational systems.

While acknowledging the need for redeployments, in the light of mandatory NGEU repayments, recalls the importance of Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps, Creative Europe and CERV, and calls for all possible efforts to keep their 7-year programme funding allocations intact.

Emphasises the importance of pilot projects and preparatory actions; stresses the need to ensure sufficient financing of proposals submitted by the Committee on Culture and Education.

Yours sincerely,

Sabine Verheyen