With today’s approval of the watered down proposals to reform EU Structural Funds in the European Parliament’s committee for regional development (see our press release), EU decision makers have taken a step away from ambitious environmental spending in the future Cohesion Policy. At the same time also national level allocation of the 2014-2020 funds is starting to take shape. But efforts to get the funds working sustainably for, and on behalf of, needy local communities are being thwarted in Slovakia – for a range of all too familiar reasons.
So far the planning for Latvia’s use of the EU funds for the 2014-2020 period has been a reasonably positive experience from a partnership perspective. Yet the process that has, until recently, been notable for its transparency and high level of public participation is now in danger of being derailed.
It may have been easy in the past for Europeans to bash the US for being retrograde when it comes to climate policies, but after last week it will get more difficult to do that.
People in Junkovac (Serbia) are still waiting for information on how they will be compensated after a landslide connected to the Kolubara lignite mine has destroyed several houses and terrified the town one month ago.
Croatia’s new Law on Strategic Investments does not bode well for the sustainable use of EU funds in Croatia now that the country has become an EU member state.
While the EU’s future common agricultural policy is taking shape in Brussels, it’s not just there that major agri-business interests are flexing their muscles to take the ‘green-ness’ out of EU agricultural spending.
