The EU will spend almost €360 billion on environmental protection in 2024.

EU spending on environmental protection reached €359.92 billion last year, a new record in the historical series, which began in 2006 with €207.73 billion.

Thus, spending on environmental protection - which includes investment and consumption - has increased by 73% across EU countries over the past 19 years, according to Eurostat data.

In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis appeared to reduce investment in the economy as a whole and, consequently, also in environmental protection. However, investments began to increase starting in 2021, and, in particular, those allocated to environmental protection increased by 30% between 2020 and 2024.

As in previous years, businesses will contribute the largest share of environmental protection spending in 2024, accounting for 51% of the total, while national governments and NGOs contributed 31% and households 18%.

On the other hand, EU countries invested €76 billion last year in essential assets for providing environmental protection services, such as wastewater treatment plants, waste transport vehicles, land acquisitions to create nature reserves, and production equipment that emits less polluting emissions.

Companies allocated almost €47 billion (61.4%) to the acquisition of technologies and equipment to reduce the environmental pressure resulting from their production processes (e.g., equipment to reduce air emissions), ahead of public administrations and NGOs (the remaining 38.6%).

The largest share of investment was allocated to wastewater and waste management services, with 38.2% and 24.8%, respectively . This was followed by radiation protection, R&D, and other environmental protection activities (14.0%), air and climate protection (11.2%), soil and groundwater protection (5.6%), biodiversity and landscape protection (5.2%), and noise reduction (1.0%).