Overcoming the crises

The European Commission is launching various projects, differing in kind, but mainly aimed at economic recovery, energy security and environmental protection; they include investments in energy networks and broadband; and injecting public and private funds to tackle climate change.Proposals and doubts. This week the Executive has launched a package of measures involving investments for a total 5 billion euros drawn from unspent EU Budget funds. As part of EU actions to counter the recession, this initiative is essentially three-pronged. As far as energy security is concerned, the EU would like to make investments worth 3.5 billion euros, divided as follows: 1.250 million euros for the capture and storing of carbon, 500 million for offshore wind energy projects, and 1750 million for projects aimed at gas and electricity interconnections. A further billion euros would be used to “extend and improve high speed internet connection in rural communities”; lastly 500 million would be allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy (application of renewable energy sources, management of water resources, biodiversity, restructuring of the dairy sector). According to the Commission, “in the short term these projects would give the European economy the stimulus it so badly needs, while at the same time fixing strategic objectives such as energy security”. All member states would benefit from such measures, but the package has aroused doubts in many governments, either because some are convinced they are receiving insufficient funds, or because some of the proposals seem geared to the medium and long rather than the short term; there are also those who think the package has been formulated without proper consultation with national governments.Stimulating recovery. The first reactions to the Commission’s plan could come at the meeting of the European Council in March. The Commission however is insisting that these funds be invested already in 2009 and 2010. The President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso explains: “The EU recovery plan is first of all an intelligent investment, a short-tern stimulus aimed at long-term objectives. The measures adopted go precisely in this direction: a series of specific projects to which would be allocated 5 billion euros so far unspent from the EU budget to construct a Europe that is stronger in the long term”. “We must learn from the recent gas crisis and invest strongly in energy – continues Barroso -. We must also provide further incentives to our economy by furnishing rural communities with information superhighways. The Commission is committed to working hand in hand with member states, which will all benefit from the measures we have proposed”. The proposed energy networks for instance include: “Nabucco” that involves Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Romania, Italy and Greece; the Baltic Interconnection (Poland, Denmark, Sweden); and the North Sea gas pipeline (German, France, Belgium and the UK).Climate and economy. “To tackle the causes and effects of climate change in the coming decades, massive public and private investments will be needed. The investments will in any case be less than the costs we would have to incur if we failed to curb the destructive force” of these environmental transformations. It was left to Stavros Dimas, Commissioner for the Environment, to explain the reasons identified by the Executive to define a unified proposal of the Twenty-Seven in view of the UN summit in Copenhagen next December aimed at reaching a post-Kyoto deal. On 28 January the Barroso Commission presented “a series of measures regarding an international accord with ambitious objectives on a global scale to fight climate change, and also explained how it could be funded”. Now the thick document will pass to the scrutiny of the EU Council and Parliament: the position of the member states could already emerge at the next summit of EU leaders in March. The basic objective is to contain the increase of temperature below 2°Celsius over the level in 1990: to achieve this, “the developed countries and the multilateral institutions will have to allocate far more substantial funds to the developing countries to help them to support the costs of their contribution” to the battle for the environment. The proposals formulated by the Commission to contain the heating of the planet include the establishment, by 2015, of a “carbon market that would cover all OECD countries and the development of innovative sources of international funding based on countries’ carbon emissions and their financial capabilities”. Dimas further points out that the European economic recovery plan, established in December 2008, and “other similar measures that are in the process of being adopted in the world to tackle the recession offer the chance to promote the necessary low carbon investments and, at the same time, stimulate growth, innovation and the creation of new jobs”.