Reaching ambitious climate targets will run into financial problems: EU

The European Union's auditing agency warned on Monday that there might not be sufficient financing available to meet the bloc's ambitious climate targets.

The warning from the Court of Auditors comes as the 27-nation bloc is already struggling to live up to image as the global leader in working toward climate neutrality because of a political fight in the EU legislature to push through environmental protection measures.

In a 63-page report, the court also noted that the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, did not include all greenhouse gas emissions in its tallies, which might lead to overly optimistic statistics. The report's authors also found some of the commission's accounting too opaque.

Regarding its finding on financing, the court said that 30 per cent of the 2021-2027 budget was to be spent on climate action, or about 87 billion euros (USD 95 billion) a year.

This amount is less than 10 per cent of the total investment needed to reach the 2030 targets, estimated at