The European Union’s proposed budget for 2014-20, fiercely negotiated in Brussels until Friday, is smaller than its predecessors — a first for a European budget and the surest sign that Continent-wide austerity has seeped into one of the most important documents of the union.
Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, insists that there is another guiding principle to the new Multiannual Financial Framework:
“European heads of state and government have taken on the commission’s suggestion to commit at least 20 percent of the ENTIRE E.U. budget from 2014-2020 to climate-related spending,” she wrote in a statement to reporters. (Emphasis hers.)
My colleagues James Kanter and Andrew Higgins reported on the many different needs that make writing the budget framework so challenging, and on the perceived winners and losers of the most recent summit meeting:
The colossal effort that was required to agree to a sum of about €960 billion, or $1.3 trillion, a mere 1 percent of the bloc’s gross domestic product, exposed once again the stubborn attachment to national priorities that has made reaching agreements on how to save the euro so painful in recent years.
Given the importance of the problem it is supposed to address, climate-related spending is to be an integral aspect of the new budget.
“Rather than being parked in a corner of the E.U. budget, climate action will now be integrated into all main spending areas — cohesion, innovation, infrastructure, agriculture etc,” Ms. Hedegaard said in the statement, noting that E.U. leaders wanted to lead the transition to a low-carbon economy.
But some environmental advocates are a lot less enthusiastic. They say that cuts to the LIFE program and international development funds, as well as some of the union’s agricultural spending, make the budget less climate-friendly than it should be.
“Instead of tackling issues that matter to the European public like the creation of green jobs, sustainable farming, environment or overseas development funding, they have agreed on a backward-looking budget,” Tony Long, director of the World Wide Fund for Nature European Policy Office, said in a statement.
The LIFE fund for environment and climate projects was supposed to get €3.6 billion to replace the current LIFE+ program. Though precise figures have not yet been determined, the category cuts suggest that any proposed funding increase will end up being cut, Sébastien Godinot, an economist with the WWF, said by telephone.
The program finances initiatives ranging from recycling drives in France to the enlargement of Natura 2000, the network of protected ecological areas, to technological processes for the molecular inactivation of fly ash.
One of critics’ biggest concerns is cuts to one of the biggest slices of the budget: the Common Agricultural Policy. In addition to subsidizing farming across the Union, the policy is supposed to make farming practices greener. Environmentalists charge that such development funding is being cut disproportionately to save direct payments to farmers, a policy that is seen to encourage large-scale agricultural businesses regardless of their environmental record.
According to Mr. Godinot, only about two percent to three percent of the C.A.P. funding goes toward measures to reduce climate change.
“It doesn’t match the challenges of climate change in Europe,” he said of the program.
Oxfam, meanwhile, criticized the cuts in international development aid.
“It is grossly unfair to balance the books on the backs of the world’s poor, who are being worst hit by financial and economic crises they did not cause,” said Natalia Alonso, head of Oxfam’s E.U. office.
Though destined for countries outside the Union, the aid is often tied to climate mitigation projects or contingent on climate-aware policy, Mr. Godinot said.
“They have cut the funds that were the most climate friendly,” he said.
What do you think? Is the proposed E.U. budget framework green enough? Or too green? Is austerity to blame for it not being greener?
