Budget 2025: the Government must not resign on its ambition for the ecological transition of the territories

In addition to the drastic reduction in the Green Fund financing local authorities and the reduction in the Energy-Climate budget, AMORCE has detected a potential significant reduction in the Heat Fund and the Circular Economy Fund of ADEME. Overall, this jeopardizes hundreds of local authority projects in terms of ecological and energy transition, with environmental, economic and social consequences for the territories and populations.

This is why AMORCE is calling on the outgoing Government to remain consistent with the environmental ambitions displayed to local authorities, particularly during the ongoing regional COPs.

Budget cuts in all directions in total contradiction with France's objectives and the Government's commitments to the territories

The elements of this ceiling letter, which AMORCE was able to take note of, provide for a reduction of more than 50% of the Green Fund, which calls into question the financing of the Ecological Transition Success Contracts (CRTE) with local authorities. The reduction in the Energy-Climate budget will also have a terrible impact on local energy policies by significantly reducing the budget of MaPrimeRénov', but also by threatening the new Territorial Climate Fund obtained in the 2024 Finance Act in order to finance the implementation of the Territorial Climate-Air-Energy Plans (PCAET).

Furthermore, AMORCE has above all discovered a potential drop of 25 to 35% in ADEME's commitment budget (1,4 billion euros in 2024), the two main victims of which would be the Heat Fund (820 million euros in 2024) and the Circular Economy Fund (300 million euros in 2024), which were already clearly insufficient to meet the demands of local authorities, in particular the development of heat networks or the implementation of sorting at source of biowaste.

Finally, the reduction in the Biodiversity budget and the Ecology credits of the Ministry of Agriculture threatens aid for the reduction of pesticides and the protection of aquatic environments. This is also bad news for the communities responsible for water, while more and more drinking water catchments are already closed, or threatened with closure in the long term, due to the presence of pesticide metabolites.

Thus, it is the entire French strategy for ecological transition and all the work of the General Secretariat for Ecological Planning that is, with a wave of the hand, called into question. Whatever the political and economic context, a government should never resign from its climate and environmental ambition!

The territories urge the future Government and Parliament to make the 2025 finance law a real accelerator of the ecological transition

During the last legislative elections, AMORCE called on future parliamentarians to understand the ecological and energy transition as an essential response to the issues of sovereignty, economic development, preservation of purchasing power and protection of citizens' health. AMORCE cannot believe that all the work carried out under the previous legislature, including that from the presidential group, warning of the inadequacy of the resources devoted to the ecological transition of the territories, is now ignored.

The national network expects the future Government and the various political forces represented in Parliament to take control and relaunch the French ecological transition strategy, particularly in its territorial dimension.

More broadly, AMORCE is calling for general mobilisation of the various stakeholders in the ecological and energy transition, all concerned and threatened by these budget cuts, to firmly oppose them.

In times of budgetary restriction, no political leader can or should consider the ecological and energy transition as the main variable for adjusting a country's economy, otherwise they will leave future generations the terrible legacy of the cost of inaction.