Press release

Angelo Caserta, Director of Birdlife Europe and current Chair of the Green 10, states: “We are deeply concerned that environmental protection and sustainability is not only going to be absent in the Commission’s Workplan for 2015 but that Vice-President Timmermans is even planning to withdraw two recently proposed pieces of legislation that would bring major benefits for citizens’ health, the environment as well as for Europe’s economy – the air package and circular economy package“.

“By withdrawing the air quality proposal – Birdlife’s Caserta added – the European Commission would miss the opportunity to prevent as many as 58,000 premature deaths per year that result from air pollution, when the current toll is 400,000 premature deaths per year. We would also miss a huge economic benefit to the European economy as the air quality directive would deliver health benefits of €40-140 billion in avoided external costs and provide about €3 billion in direct benefits due to higher productivity of the workforce, lower healthcare costs, higher crop yields and less damage to buildings”.

The Green 10 letter also states: “Withdrawing the circular economy package would also go against the number one priority of the European Commission. Europe would fail to create as many as 180,000 new jobs through turning waste into a resource while making business more competitive and reducing demand for and dependency from costly scarce resources from outside the continent”.

NOTE

Link to Green 10 Open Letter

http://www.green10.org/publications/?logout=1

The European Commission last year made ambitious plans to transform the European economy away from fossil fuels and heavy resource use, meaning potential green benefits for the newer, more energy-intensive EU member states.

Yet the spending plans for 2014–2020 submitted to Brussels by eight Central and Eastern European countries would lock them into dirty energy futures at the expense of citizens and the environment.

“This EU budget was meant to herald a new era of greener spending and help Central and Eastern European countries become better equipped for the environmental and economic crises facing the world today. Instead what we see is a continuation of the same old spending patterns with governments planning to use the money for fossil fuel-fed, resource intensive projects” said Markus Trilling, EU funds coordinator at Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe.

CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth Europe obtained the draft spending plans of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Croatia from for 2014–2020 and compared these with how funds were allocated seven years ago. The analysis finds that:

• Money meant for the development of the region will continue to fund fossil fuels – primarily gas but also coal via co-generation projects. In Poland and Estonia, fossil fuels account for over 20 percent of the energy infrastructure planned to be financed from the EU Budget.
• Central and Eastern European countries plan to spend over half their transport funds on roads, with only token amounts going to sustainable and public transport infrastructure.
• Funding for renewable energy is static compared to the previous seven years, or even declining in some countries (particularly in the Czech Republic); much of this funding – virtually all in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – goes to potentially environmentally damaging biomass projects
• More than half of funds meant for waste will be spent on incineration and landfills as opposed to more sustainable practices such as prevention, recycling and reuse.
• Funding for energy efficiency has increased, roughly quadrupling in the Czech Republic and Poland – although some of this money will go to large polluters.

“Plans for using the new multi-billion Euro budget are little more than spending as usual. We’re seeing the same old types of projects being financed when a new era of more modern greener spending was promised. We need more public investments in sustainable energy and transport and in waste reuse and recycling which could work as catalysts for private investors,” concluded Markus Trilling.

The only significant improvement in the next seven year budgeting period is an increase in funding for energy efficiency – although it must be ensured that this is spent on the citizens and communities who need it, and not to cut the energy bills of polluting industries.

The European Commission has yet to approve the vast majority of national spending plans for the EU funds. Fewer than 40 out of a total of 535 EU-funded programmes have so far been approved, meaning the Commission can still insist on greener spending.

CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth Europe are calling on the European Commission to make sure authorities in Central and Eastern Europe revise their plans and use European public funds to modernise their economies and bring long-lasting, sustainable benefits to citizens. They are calling for subsidies for dirty activities by major companies to be stopped.

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* The visualisation is available for publication. The necessary code can be made available upon request.

For more information please contact:

Markus Trilling, EU funds campaigner for CEE Bankwatch & Friends of the Earth Europe
Tel: +32 (0) 2 893 10 31
Email: markus.trilling@foeeurope.org