Navigating crises and delivering results with the EU Budget in 2025

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Today, the College of Commissioners adopted the Annual Management and Performance Report for 2025 (AMPR). The AMPR highlights the key role the EU budget played in navigating multiple crises that year and shows that it continued to deliver for European citizens. The EU budget boosted the EU’s competitiveness, reduced strategic dependencies, and improved security and defence, facilitating cooperation between Member States. The budget contributed to the EU’s unwavering support for Ukraine, and helped to ensure the EU’s global standing.

The EU budget was instrumental to delivering on the EU’s political priorities

The AMPR shows that in 2025, the EU budget kept supporting the EU’s political priorities:

• The EU budget boosted competitiveness by funding research and innovation via Horizon Europe, and start-ups and small and medium enterprises through the European Innovation Council.
• It leveraged investments for sustainable innovation with InvestEU guarantees, which by the end of 2025 supported over 90,000 SMEs. It scaled up innovation with the Innovation Fund and channelled resources towards critical clean, digital and biotechnologies with the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP).
• In 2025, the EU also stepped up its security and defence policy:
  • The new Security Action for Europe programme will provide up to €150 billion in loans to Member States. In 2025 around €400 million were allocated to support defence innovation.
  • 63 projects with a total budget of more than €1 billion were launched under the European Defence Fund, while the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (supported 31 projects, providing more than €500 million to enhance European defence production capabilities.
  • STEP was extended to include defence technologies and further boost European defence.
• Cohesion policy continued to improve livelihoods across the EU. By the end of 2025, it has provided support in the form of grants, equity, guarantees, loans and advice to more than 130,000 small and medium-sized companies, funding an additional 1,434 megawatts-hour of renewable energy production capacity, access to very-high-capacity broadband for more than 335,000 dwellings, and over 1,000 kilometres of new, upgraded or modernised roads. Additionally, over €15 billion of cohesion policy funds were reallocated towards competitiveness in 2025.
• The Common Agricultural Policy continued to support farmers’ livelihoods and productivity and to promote vibrant rural economies, supporting 5.5 million farmers overall and 311,000 young farmers. It created over 270,000 jobs in 2025 alone.
• Support to Ukraine remained strong, with €10.7 billion provided through the Ukraine Facility under the Ukraine Plan.

Under NextGenerationEU, the European Commission disbursed €87.3 billion to Member States through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, further contributing to the EU’s clean and digital transitions. Among the highlights for 2025:

• Annual energy consumption was reduced by 37.6 million megawatts-hour, which is the average annual consumption of almost 2 million EU households;
• Around 20 million additional households gained access to very-high-capacity internet networks;
• Approximately 60.2 million people will benefit from new or modernised healthcare facilities;
• Some 30.7 million people participated in education and training and almost 3.5 million people were in employment or engaged in job-searching activities;
• Approximately 4.9 million enterprises received support – whether monetary or in kind.

Combining the EU budget with Member State support and private capital, the Global Gateway was instrumental in supporting the EU’s international partnerships. For example:

• At the G20 Summit in South Africa, the Scaling up Renewables in Africa Global Gateway campaign mobilised €15.5 billion for clean energy and access to electricity across the continent.
• In 2025, a Team Europe Global Gateway investment package mobilised €12 billion for Central Asia and, at the first-ever EU–Pacific Business Forum, the Commission announced nearly €300 million of Global Gateway investments dedicated to the entire Pacific region.
• The European Fund for Sustainable Development Pluscontributed to the expansion of the Global Gatewayby sharing the risks of development finance partners when they mobilise their own resources. In 2025, the EU budget provided cover for European Investment Bank loans of approximately €4 billion, which are expected to leverage €14 billion in total investment.

The EU budget continued financing climate, biodiversity, digital and gender equality goals:

• 33% of the combined EU budget and NextGenerationEU funding supported climate objectives;
• 7.8% supported biodiversity;
• 10.1% supported the digital transition;
• and 19% of the EU budget contributed directly or indirectly to advancing gender equality.

More information on these achievements and on the EU’s financial programmes are presented in the Programme Performance Statements.

Despite these achievements, the number and size of unexpected challenges since the beginning of the current programming period strained the EU budget’s limited flexibility. This is why the Commission has proposed a more agile long-term budget for the 2028-2034 period, capable of adapting as needs and priorities evolve, while continuing to provide the predictability necessary for long-term investment.

The EU budget remains well managed and protected

The Commission attaches great importance to making the best possible use of taxpayers’ money. This report shows the continued effort of protecting the EU budget against errors, fraud or breaches of the principles of the rule of law.

For this purpose, the Commission has robust tools in place, including:

• the Conditionality Regulation in cases of rule of law breaches in a given Member State, threatening EU financial interests;
• a solid internal control framework designed to provide reasonable assurance on the achievement of the Commission’s objectives, including the effectiveness and efficiency of operations, reliability of reporting, safeguarding of assets, prevention, detection, correction and follow-up of irregularities, including fraud, and compliance with existing rules;
• a reinforced Financial Regulation, including improvements for beneficiaries of EU funding, ensuring readiness to react in case of crisis, and a better protected and transparent EU budget.

In 2025, the Commission also launched the review of the EU Anti-Fraud Architecture, complementing its work on the next EU budget for 2028-2034. Its aim is to ensure a strengthened and more efficient protection of the Union’s financial interests.

Background

The AMPR is an accountability and communication tool. Through this document, the Commission takes overall political responsibility for the management of the EU budget, showing the results achieved with it, including an overview of the Commission’s internal control and financial management.

The report is published as part of the Integrated Financial and Accountability Reporting package, which also contains the annual report on the follow-up of the discharge, the Commission’s report on internal audits carried out in 2025, the cash flow forecast, and the consolidated annual accounts. The report is the Commission’s contribution to the 2025 discharge procedure, where various stakeholders scrutinise the implementation of the EU budget. In this case, the European Parliament grants discharge taking into account a recommendation from the Council. By approving how the European Commission, in cooperation with the Member States, has implemented the EU budget in a given year, the European Parliament formally closes the budget year in question.

The Commission collaborates closely with Member States and other partners to make sure the EU budget is spent efficiently, free from fraud and irregularities, and in line with the EU’s policy goals to benefit citizens and achieve tangible results.

For more information

Annual Management and Performance Reports

The 2028-2034 EU budget for a stronger Europe