Press release

Over 250 non-government organisations launch alternative vision for Europe

Brussels, June 20, 2017 – More than 250 non-government organisations from across Europe have today released an alternative vision for a more democratic, just and sustainable Europe. [1]

INVITATION: Online press briefing, Tuesday June 27, at 10.00, with speakers from a new campaign about rethinking the future EU budget to advance ‘Scenario 6: Sustainable Europe for its Citizens’. Join at: https://bankwatch.org/events/PeoplesBudget – More information below.

Intended to influence the debate on the future direction of Europe, this alternative vision is endorsed by organisations representing a multitude of public interest issues, including labour rights, culture, development, environment, health, women’s rights, youth, and anti-discrimination groups.

It comes ahead of a summit of EU leaders this week with key issues for Europe’s future on the agenda, including migration, security, jobs and Brexit. This week also marks the one year anniversary of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union (June 23) which propelled questions about the future of Europe up the political agenda.

The vision describes a future for Europe in which “sustainability sits firmly at the heart of the European project,” and the EU focuses on “democracy and participation, social and environmental justice, solidarity and sustainability, respect for the rule of law, and human rights both within Europe and around the globe”.

The organisations are putting this scenario forward as an alternative to proposals from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, including five ‘Future of Europe’ scenarios which are currently being consulted on with member states with first conclusions due at the end of the year. [2]

For SDG Watch Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe, Leida Rijnhout, said:

The five scenarios for the future of Europe put forward by President Juncker are all deeply disappointing and have little connection to the challenges that the European Union faces. Instead we need a bold vision – an alternative sixth scenario – that puts social and environmental wellbeing at the core. The implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development should be absolutely key for a future that serves people and the planet, not vested interests.

General Secretary of EPSU (European Public Service Union), Jan Willem Goudriaan, said:

Public services and decent work are key ingredients for a fairer, more cohesive and sustainable Europe. Everyone benefits from investment in, for example, high quality public healthcare, social services, education, and environmental services. Rather than liberalising public services for the benefit of the few, Europe should develop a proactive strategy to strengthen public investment and democratic accountability in the provision of quality public services for all.

Director of CEE Bankwatch Network, Petr Hlobil, added:

There is a crisis of imagination in Brussels. Reforming the EU Budget holds part of the key to unlocking a progressive and inspiring new vision for Europe. Innovating in how we involve citizens and civil society in EU spending to build flourishing, sustainable futures, and designing EU finance to create more equal societies through this great transition to sustainable well-being, hold the highest potential to reconnect people with the European project.

Secretary General of the European Public Health Alliance, Nina Renshaw, said:

We are all living healthier lives today thanks to the EU, but it is only through their continued action that we can tackle cross-border health challenges like antimicrobial resistance and make sure we have a healthy population to unlock the full potential of social and economic policies. 70% of Europeans want the EU to do more on health – yet their voices go unheard. The debate on the future of Europe is an unmissable opportunity to put better health at the heart of all policies, ensure stronger protection for patients and consumers and better access to healthcare, which will make a huge difference to all of us.

Notes:

[1] 256 organisations are supporting ‘Scenario 6: Sustainable Europe for its Citizens’, see:
http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/other/2017/sustainable-europe-for-citizens-6th-scenario.pdf

[2] The European Commission’s White Paper on the Future of Europe is available at:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/white_paper_on_the_future_of_europe_en.pdf

For more information please contact:

Friends of the Earth Europe/SDG Watch Europe:
Leida Rijnhout
Leida.Rijnhout@foeeurope.org
+32 494 89 30 52

EPSU:
Jan Willem Goudriaan
jwgoudriaan@epsu.org
+32 475 25 69 12

EPHA:
Giulia Vettorem
giulia@epha.org
+32 2 233 38 84

CEE Bankwatch Network:
David Holyoake
david.holyoake@bankwatch.org
+32 470 36 98 17

Media invitation

CEE Bankwatch Network, CEEweb for Biodiversity, Friends of the Earth Europe and SDG Watch Europe invite you to an online press briefing: Rethinking the future EU budget to advance a scenario six for Europe

When: Tuesday 27 June 10:00-11:00 CET

Where: More information and live-streaming of the briefing at https://bankwatch.org/events/PeoplesBudget

People’s movements and civil society dismayed at AIIB Energy Sector Strategy

JEJU, SOUTH KOREA. Grassroots movements, non-government organizations and civil society networks across Asia and the rest of the world expressed “strong disappointment and disagreement” today to the Energy Sector Strategy of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is holding its 2nd Annual Board of Governors Meeting in Jeju, South Korea.

The groups met at the Benikea Hotel in Jeju from June 13 to 15 to agree on their analysis of the AIIB Energy Sector Strategy paper. They are attending as official delegates from CSOs and NGOs to the AIIB Board of Governors meeting.

Disappointed for still allowing coal financing

Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) said, “We welcome the fact that we were invited to submit our proposals and concerns during the process of drafting the bank’s Energy Sector Strategy. But we are disappointed to and disagree with the Energy Sector Strategy paper for still allowing coal financing. While it qualifies the conditions under which coal projects can be financed by the AIIB, the circumstances described still leaves the door wide open for coal support”.

“The deeply harmful impacts of coal mining and coal power plans on communities and the environment are undeniable and well-documented. Coal power’s huge contribution to the escalation of the climate crisis is well-established and widely acknowledged. It is in direct contradiction to AIIB’s avowed commitment to sustainable development and the Paris Agreement which expresses a goal of keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees,” Rayyan Hassan of the NGO Forum on ADB clarified.

Clean coal is unacceptable

Sreedhar Ramamurthi, managing trustee of India’s Environics Trust expounded, “The problem of energy poverty still affects hundreds of millions of people in the region. Governments have used this as justification to expand the coal power industry – referring to coal as the quickest and cheapest solution to the problem of energy access. This is not an acceptable argument. Neither is it acceptable to present “clean coal technologies” as the alternative to old and obsolete coal technologies. There is no longer any excuse not to directly shift to renewable energy systems, which have already become more economically and financially feasible alternatives as evidenced by experiences in many countries including China and India”.

Wawa Wang, public finance officer of Bankwatch cited that last month, the costs for solar in India hit another record low, at US$37/MWh. It dropped by an astonishing 45% since January 2016 its last recorded lowest price. Proposals for new coal-fired power plants are now being abandoned as they could no longer compete with solar prices.

“Likewise, we disagree with AIIB supporting large hydro systems such as Nenskra hydropower in Georgia, which is in the Bank’s pipeline to be decided upon on September. For decades communities in Asia have resisted these projects for their devastating social and environmental impacts,” Wang furthered.

Green Bank for Swift and Just Transition from Dirty Energy

Antonio Tricarico of Re:Common, formerly with the Campaign to Reform the World Bank (CRBM) concluded, “The AIIB, if it is to be true to its claims as a “green bank,” must marshal its resources to support a swift and just transition to renewable and clean energy systems for people and communities of Asia, and put an end to fossil fuels and other harmful energy as soon as possible. Our people and planet deserve no less.”

For interviews, contact:

Lidy Nacpil (lnacpil@gmail.com)

Sreedhar Ramamurthi (environics@gmail.com)

Antonio Tricarico (atricarico@recommon.org)

Rayyan Hassan (rayyan@forum-adb.org)

Wawa Wang (wawa.wang@bankwatch.org)

Planned coal power in the Balkans will breach new EU pollution standards – analysis

Almost none of the new coal power plants planned in the Western Balkans will meet new, stricter EU pollution standards, according to a new analysis by CEE Bankwatch Network, released today.

The analysis is available at https://bankwatch.org/sites/default/files/BREF-Balkan-coal-14Jun2017.pdf

On 28 April this year, EU officials adopted new technical standards for large combustion plants, the so-called ‘LCP BREF’, (1) which sets out the best available techniques for controlling pollution to air, water and soil, as well as the emission limits that must be achieved by applying these techniques.

Bankwatch’s analysis (2) looks at eight coal-fired units totalling 2.6 GW in capacity planned in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, (3) plus the Stanari plant in Bosnia-Herzegovina which started commercial operation last September. Compared to the air pollution limits set in the BREF, five of the planned units would certainly not meet the new standards, while insufficient information is available for the remaining three.

Non-compliance is a problem not only for countries seeking EU accession – as these countries would be required to adopt EU law – but also for compliance with domestic legislation. Most governments in the Western Balkans have already adopted legislation stating that the EU’s LCP BREF is to be used as the basis for permitting new coal projects, so these standards must be applied to new plants as soon as they enter force in the EU later this year.

“Of course project promoters will be reluctant to cause delays to their projects by undertaking reviews and taking measures to bring them into line with the new LCP BREF, but failing to do so now will cost them dearly later. The additional costs that the new standards would entail are but the latest warning sign for governments that coal is fast becoming an unbearable liability”, said Pippa Gallop, Bankwatch’s research co-ordinator and author of the briefing.

“Now that electricity companies in the Western Balkans are obliged to adhere to EU market rules, they must do much more to make sure their investments are financially viable and future-proof,” added Ioana Ciuta, Bankwatch Energy Co-ordinator. “They can no longer just go and ask the state for money for additional funds for investment or push legal implementation deadlines ever-further into the future. They need to start looking ahead and examining whether their plans are going to land them in trouble in a few years”.

Contacts

Pippa Gallop
Research Co-ordinator, CEE Bankwatch Network
pippa.gallop@bankwatch.org
+385 99 755 9787
Skype: pippa.gallop

Ioana Ciuta
Energy Co-ordinator, CEE Bankwatch Network
ioana.ciuta@bankwatch.org
+40 724 020 281
Twitter: @unaltuser

Notes

(1) For the decision and the annex containing the standards, see http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regcomitology/index.cfm?do=search.documentdetail&Dos_ID=14177&DS_ID=50159&Version=1

(2) The analysis is available at https://bankwatch.org/sites/default/files/BREF-Balkan-coal-14Jun2017.pdf

(3) The planned plants are:

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Tuzla 7, Banovići, Ugljevik III units 1 and 2
Kosovo: Kosova e Re
Macedonia: Oslomej reconstruction
Montenegro: Pljevlja II
Serbia: Kostolac B3

More plants are planned across the region but are at a less advanced stage of preparation.

The Runcurel expropriations, Europe’s second most harmful subsidy

The Romanian Government has been named and shamed today in a public fossil fuel subsidies awards ceremony in Brussels. From 10 April till 8 May, the public voted on the deadliest, dirtiest and sneakiest subsidies to fossil fuels in Europe. Our country was shamed for fostering land expropriations required for expanding a coal mine, displacing families and destroying nature.

In today’s award ceremony, Romania came in second in the Deadly Funding Award category. Declaring the project one of “public utility and national interest”, EUR 3 million were allocated from the state budget through Government Decision 960/2015 to buy 341 hectares of land and immediately hand them over to Oltenia Energy Complex. Owners will therefore receive a mere 1 EUR per square metre, regardless of what they own – be it forests, orchards or houses. 113 hectares of forest, two historical monuments and an entire village will be wiped out from the map. This year, the Government plans to publish two similar decisions for the expansion of the Jilț Sud and Roșia mines.

European countries have all agreed to scale up their efforts to tackle climate change in compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement. Still, governments and other public institutions all over Europe are spending billions of euro on funding one of the main causes of climate change: the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. By providing subsidies, governments end up taking one step forward and two steps back when it comes to climate action.

Alexandru Mustață, Bankwatch Romania energy campaigner said: “We are hoping that this award will make the Romanian Government reconsider spending another 2.5 million euro for two more mine expansions. Enough people have already suffered from the Runcurel expropriations.”

CAN Europe’s Director Wendel Trio explained: “These awards reveal that financial commitments are not consistent with Government promises to tackle climate change in line with the Paris Agreement. With the awards we expose a large amount of largely hidden subsidies for fossil fuels and call on all European Governments to phase them out urgently and no later than 2020. We also ask them to make their budgets 100% climate-friendly and implement the clean energy transition as soon as possible. They must put their people and environment ahead of polluting fossil fuels.”

How Europe’s bank spends cash for climate undermines Paris commitments

The EU’s 28 finance ministers will be meeting tomorrow (May 23) to discuss the priorities of the European Investment Bank (EIB) for the coming year. A new analysis finds the bank’s contribution to Europe’s response to the climate crisis has been worryingly insufficient and needs to be stepped up.

An uneven investment strategy across the EU’s 28 Member States and a lack of added value by one of its main financial tools means that the EIB puts the EU at risk of not meeting its climate targets under the Paris Agreement, according to a new briefing from Counter Balance and CEE Bankwatch Network.

The full briefing is available here on the Bankwatch website.

The EIB’s “climate action” lending has increased last year to a total of EUR 17.5 billion. But, as the briefing shows, in as many as 12 Member States less than 10 per cent of EIB loans support projects intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and facilitate adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

Most of these are ‘cohesion countries’, where GDP is lower than the EU average, hence the greater need for climate action money. Nevertheless, the briefing finds that EIB money for climate action is overwhelmingly allocated to the more advanced economies of the EU.

The briefing also shows how the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), the guarantee mechanism rolled out by Commission President Juncker to attract private capital, failed to reach the 25 per cent climate action threshold set by the EIB, with just EUR 2.5 billion in 2016 allocated to projects that contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This again bodes poorly for the ‘cohesion countries’, where EFSI climate finance did not exceed 10 per cent of total loans to the region. Conversely, 70 per cent of the money for renewable energy projects went to a single country – Belgium – while 80 per cent of money for energy efficiency was earmarked for France, Finland and Germany.

Anna Roggenbuck, EIB policy officer at CEE Bankwatch Network, said: “Clearly the EIB needs to do better with its climate money, especially for those who need it most. In addition to more for renewables and energy efficiency, the bank needs to move away from the fossil fuel investments that undermine its progress on climate action elsewhere, like the massive EUR 3 billion loans proposed for sections of the Southern Gas Corridor.”

Xavier Sol, Director of Counter Balance, said: “For all the fanfare pumped by the Commission about the EFSI, it has not lived up to its billing so far, especially in terms of contributing to European cohesion. The geographical concentration of the funds remains problematic for the second consecutive year, despite it being repeatedly pointed out by both civil society and the European Parliament. This is certainly an issue that European finance ministers need to address, also in the context of Brexit and its uncertain consequences on the EIB.”

For more information contact:

Xavier Sol
Director, Counter Balance
xavier.sol AT counter-balance.org
+32 2 893 08 61
Twitter: @xavier_sol

Anna Roggenbuck
EIB Policy Officer, CEE Bankwatch Network
annar AT bankwatch.org
+355 683 281 550 (only available until May 24)

Image by Steintec

Investment Plan for Europe more climate friendly, but European Parliament shows little ambition

Today in Strasburg, the European Parliament lead committees have brought the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) closer to compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement. However, they have once again fallen short of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, which stand in the way of climate action.

Today the ECON/BUDG committees (1) voted on the European Parliament’s position on the future of the EFSI, the cornerstone of the Investment Plan for Europe. The committees have endorsed a 40% target on climate action. They also empowered the EFSI steering board, a governance body led by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank overseeing the strategic direction of the fund, to develop a climate test which all eligible projects and the overall EFSI portfolio have to pass.

In a previous vote on the prolongation of the EFSI in the ITRE committee MEPs agreed to even higher climate protection targets and the introduction of earmarking for energy efficiency. Those more ambitious climate action elements though have not been picked-up by the ECON and BUDG committees.

Overall, this position of the European Parliament does not go much further than what the European Commission and Council proposed earlier.

In September 2016 the European Commission published its proposal for the prolongation of the EFSI until 2020 – two and a half years beyond its initial term – with the aim to leverage 500 billion euro in additional investments across the EU. The Commission’s proposal offered some positive climate action provisions, such as setting a 40% target for projects with climate relevance or providing for technical assistance to beneficiaries to develop clean energy projects, though it still allows for financing of fossil fuel infrastructure (2).

In December 2016 the ECOFIN council supported the positive climate protection provisions of the Commission’s proposal. However, they still did not exclude financing for fossil fuel infrastructure from the EFSI.

Markus Trilling, Finance and Subsidies Policy Coordinator at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe said:
“By introducing a climate proofing tool for the entire EFSI the European Parliament finally acknowledges the obligations stemming from the Paris Climate Agreement, namely to shift financial flows and investments in order limit climate change to 1.5C.”

“However, the European Parliament missed out on the most straightforward way to achieve compliance with the climate protection requirements, namely to ban fossil fuels. Now it is on the Steering Board to develop and, even more important, to enforce climate impact assessment tools which guarantee the EFSI is fit for future and contributes to catalyse the low-carbon and clean energy transition.”

Xavier Sol, Director at Counter Balance said:
“Reinforcing climate action as part of the Investment Plan for Europe is a welcome step. Indeed, EFSI has been supporting numerous fossil fuel infrastructure, namely gas projects, as well as high-carbon transport infrastructure. Therefore, we hope the changes brought forward by the Parliament will contribute to reverse this trend and force the EIB to rule out such investments.”

Anna Roggenbuck, Policy Officer at CEE Bankwatch Network said:
“Endorsing a 40% target on climate action was awaited and necessary step given the EFSI disappointing climate action record in 2016. Perhaps this will finally give the Fund a boost to direct financial guarantees towards this type of investments. We hope that this will also be an incentive for financing renewables and energy efficiency projects in countries where so far EFSI has not been utilised.”

For more information, contact:

Nicolas Derobert, CAN Europe Communications coordinator, nicolas@caneurope.org, 00 32 483 62 18 88

Xavier Sold, Counter Balance director, xavier.sol@counter-balance.org, 00 32 473 223 893

Notes for the editors

(1) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&reference=CJ16-OJ-20170515-1&language=EN

(2) “The Steering Board shall provide detailed guidance and assessment tools, in particular with regard to eligible projects and to the overall portfolio of the EFSI, with particular regard to COP21. That guidance shall ensure that at least 40 % of EFSI financing under the infrastructure and innovation window supports project components that contribute to climate action”

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