EU funds to make Latvia the greenest country in the world? A vision still on paper
October 8, 2012
This summer Latvia’s minister for environment and regional development, along with some other like-minded politicians, appeared to kick-start a green revolution by proposing to set a ‘green vision’ for the small Baltic country’s National Development Plan (NDP) for the 2014-2020 period.
EU money well spent – New map of projects
October 8, 2012
Bankwatch, Friends of the Earth Europe and WWF have collaborated to produce a new map that illustrates some of the best practice Cohesion policy investments in infrastructure projects to be realised during the 2007-13 financial period.
EU budget debate: Some one trillion euro questions and answers
October 8, 2012
The negotiations over the future EU budget for 2014-20 are well underway now, often being described under the epitaph ‘EU budget battle’. We tolerate no blood-letting on the pages of Bankwatch Mail. So Keti Medarova-Bergstrom, Senior Policy Analyst at the Institute for European Environmental Policy, and Pawel Swidlicki, Research Analyst at Open Europe, instead put their heads together to identify why and where EU budgetary spending has got it wrong in the past and propose how roughly one trillion euros can better serve Europe’s environment, economy and people in the next funding period. European decision-makers – lay down your budget weapons and listen!
New study: Clean energy investments will pay off at scale
October 8, 2012
How much investment money is needed to create 60,000 jobs, and how much to save half a million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually? These are the kinds of calculations that a new Bankwatch study has been making with an eye on the uses of the EU’s future Cohesion policy funds in central and eastern Europe.
Latest waste plans set to keep Sofia bottom of Europe’s waste pile
October 8, 2012
In recent years Sofia municipality has been looking for a modern waste management solution, but all in the wrong direction. At the end of 2011, the Bulgarian capital submitted its latest application for funding to the European Commission. Regrettably, this featured a capital-intensive waste treatment facility and virtually no measures directed at higher levels of the so-called ‘waste hierarchy’ – namely prevention and reuse.
Bankwatch contest
October 8, 2012
Entries have started arriving at Bankwatch Towers with concepts and ideas for sustainable, community-based projects – the kind of projects that we think should be receiving much more support from the EU budget. If you live in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Latvia, Hungary, Macedonia or Slovakia, send us your ideas for a chance to realise them with a 3,000 euro prize.
Feeding the fire: EU money blocked for one Czech incinerator, yet more still in the pipeline
October 8, 2012
Back in August, the Czech Republic’s handling of municipal waste attracted criticism from the European Commission, when it was identified as one of several EU member states not doing enough to recycle as well as actually infringing European legislation.
The EU budget needs to be greener, not leaner and meaner
October 8, 2012
It is now widely acknowledged that there is enormous potential to reap environmental, social and economic dividends through improving the energy efficiency of Europe’s 160 million buildings. And yet actual investments in energy efficiency measures remain very small in comparison to this potential. To achieve the EU objective of a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020 (from 1990 levels), the European Investment Bank estimates that EUR 85 billion per year is needed, with EUR 60 billion per year required for buildings alone. The forthcoming EU budget for 2014-20, currently being negotiated, has a vital role to play here, for both Europe’s more developed and less developed countries.
Making sure EU funds pave the way to cleaner transport
October 8, 2012
The European Parliament has called for ‘sustainable transport’ to be a top priority for the next round of EU cohesion spending. Does this mean that we’ll be seeing a new generation of genuinely clean transport projects across Europe? Not just yet, argues Nina Renshaw of sustainable transport campaign group T
The EU’s pie in the sky: New analysis questions further funding support for aviation
October 8, 2012
A recently published analysis from Bankwatch that examines existing EU funding support for airports in Poland concludes that such EU support for airport infrastructure in Poland and other EU countries has to be phased out in the next EU budget period 2014-2020.
