EU Auditors’ report on the EU Innovation Fund, 19 March 2026

On Thursday, 19 March, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) will publish a special report on the EU’s Innovation Fund.

The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) covers thousands of power plants and industrial facilities across the European Economic Area, and is widely regarded as the world’s largest carbon market. By gradually lowering overall emissions limits, it is designed to steer investment towards low-carbon solutions and support the EU’s long-term climate neutrality objective.

The EU’s Innovation Fund, which was launched in 2020, is one of the world’s largest programmes supporting EU competitiveness in the clean-tech sector through the scaling-up up of innovative net-zero technologies. The fund is financed by the sale of ETS allowances.

The auditors assessed whether the Innovation Fund is effective at supporting the scaling-up of innovative demonstration projects (large pilot initiatives testing new technologies in real industrial or energy settings before full commercial deployment) and contributing to the EU’s decarbonisation goals. The audit covered the period from 2020 to June 2025, and included visits to seven projects in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The report and press release will be published on the ECA website eca.europa.eu at 17:00 CET on Thursday 19 March. The ECA member responsible for this report is João Leão.

The ECA’s special reports set out the results of its audits of EU policies and programmes or management topics related to specific budgetary areas. The ECA selects and designs these audit tasks to be of maximum impact by considering the risks to performance or compliance, the level of income or spending involved, forthcoming developments and political and public interest.