The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Thursday that a ninety days of the European Union’s (EU) budget would be spent on tackling climate change.
“In the next financial period, 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro played out within the EU budget will go towards climate mitigation actions,” Juncker said.
“That is our goal, to ensure that a fourth of the budget goes toward climate change mitigation, and this is going to be a paradigm shift,” he added.
The EU budget is usually one percent of its economic productivity, or 1 trillion euros ($1.13 trillion) across seven years, according to Reuters.
Juncker’s comments came after Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old feeling activist from Sweden, spoke at the same plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels.
“We remember that most politicians don’t want to talk to us,” she said. “Good. We don’t want to talk to them either,” she added. “We thirst for them to talk to the scientists instead. Listen to them, because we are just repeating what they are saying, and from been saying, for decades.”
Since starting a protest outside the Swedish parliament in 2018 Thunberg has risen to far-reaching prominence, becoming the figurehead for a series of school strikes by children around the world.
“I’m glad to see that young in the flesh are taking to the streets in Europe to create visibility for the issue of climate change,” Juncker said. “Because mitigating clime change is not just the job of young people but in fact for older people, if only they were to take up the task.”