Pannier-Runacher defends a budget for ecology in "slight increase", but in decline on electric vehicles

The total allocation for its broad ministry of ecological transition, biodiversity, forests, the sea and fisheries has fallen between 2024 and 2025, as part of budget cuts.

Nevertheless, "the ecology budget is slightly increasing, notably because of renewable energies," assured Agnès Pannier-Runacher, without detailing her calculation method.

However, not all budget lines are increasing: "there is one line in particular which is not negligible, the electrification of vehicles, which is in very sharp decline," she acknowledged.

"So efforts are being made" in the face of the current budgetary crisis, the minister justified herself.

"What has done the most harm to the ecology budget, in reality, is the censorship, it is the fact that in January, I had zero credits for MaPrimRénov," she counter-attacked.

The available credits of 2,3 billion euros in 2025 for MaPrimRénov, a support system for the energy renovation of housing, are indeed postponed from March. But "that means I have lost two months of the year", or "16% of the budget".

"So all the hypocrites who say: 'we sacrificed the ecology budget' and who voted for censure and who therefore reset my credits to zero, I pass the responsibility on to them," castigated Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

Faced with attacks from the right and the far right against state agencies linked to ecology, such as Ademe or OFB, or against standards, the minister reiterated: "ecology is not the problem, the problem today is climate change and its impact on our economy, on our heritage."

"I do not confuse ecology and bureaucracy," she added, citing her experience as a business leader who knows "the music of the market economy" and has been "confronted with standards (...) that are sometimes a little paradoxical and complicated."

"But on the other hand, what is at stake with climate change is a question of sovereignty, it is a scarcity of access to resources, whether it be food, fishing, raw materials, energy, water," she explained.