Green budgeting in the EU

Overview

Why is Green Budgeting important?

Greening national budgets is key for climate action and the green transition. This is because budgets are one of the main expressions of how a government intends to implement its political ambition. The 2019 European Commission’s Green Deal Communication highlights that “a greater use of green budgeting tools will help to redirect public investment, consumption and taxation to green priorities and away from harmful subsidies”

Member States’ websites

Most EU Member States have established green budgeting practices. Some report about them on dedicated websites:

Tools

EU Green Budgeting Reference Framework (GBRF)

The European Commission, jointly with the EU Member States, has developed a EU Green Budgeting Reference Framework (GBRF) as a toolkit for Member States willing to implementing or upgrade green budgeting practices.

European Commission Green Budgeting Survey 

Since 2021, the European Commission has been conducting a survey every two years. The survey gathers information on green budgeting practices in Member States and plans for future developments. Where green budgeting practices are in place, this survey aims to gain a better understanding of the design of these practices, their implementation and the remaining challenges. 

Green and Brown budgetary items lists

To support Member States in developing their own green budgeting practices, DG ECFIN has produced two lists of budgetary items whose net environmental impact could be considered broadly as ‘green’ or ‘brown’. These lists are only indicative and not comprehensive, in that they provide some key examples of ‘mostly’ green and ‘mostly’ brown measures. They could serve as a starting point for those Member States that wish to develop their own green budget tagging methodology.

Training

The European Commission has concluded a Technical Support Instrument (TSI) project to help Member States build administrative and technical capacity for developing a green budgeting framework at a national level (2021-2024). The training supported the alignment of the current or planned national green budgeting practices with the European Commission’s Green Budgeting Reference Framework. 23 Member States joined this training. The training comprised three modules: 

• Module 1 defined green budgeting and provided an overview of existing green budgeting frameworks and national practices. It also provided information on performance budgeting and green tagging.
• Module 2 consisted of case studies tailored to the specific needs of each Member State. It provided an understanding of the main methods and challenges of identifying expenditures, tax expenditures and revenues relevant to climate and environmental objectives.
• Module 3 was a country-specific guided diagnostic/self-assessment of institutional settings and capacities and concluded with recommendations on areas of improvement

=> Key achievements and success stories TSI Green Budgeting

In September 2025, the Commission launched a second TSI project on green budgeting, which is supporting ten Member States in (further) developing their green budgeting practices. It comprises two packages:

• Tailor-made support in Czechia, Cyprus, Portugal, Denmark, and France, covering tagging methodologies, as well as other green budgeting tools, including but not limited to environmental impact assessments, green spending reviews, climate budget tagging and performance-based budgeting for environmental outcomes, capacity building, and improvement of governance frameworks.
• Civil servants exchange, involving the ten beneficiary Member States (Croatia, Czechia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain), fostering peer learning on topics like green tagging in agriculture and investments, green indicators in performance budgeting, macro-fiscal analysis, and links to the MFF and green bonds.

Additionally, in a separate TSI project, between 2024 and 2026, Lombardy (Italy) and Baden-Württemberg (Germany) are receiving technical support for green budgeting at regional level and Greece is receiving support at national level. 

Publications

Events

Green budgeting at Cop26