EU

The European Semester should be further developed to become an effective governance and enforcement mechanism that can ensure coherence between national fiscal policies and overarching sustainable development objectives. Environmental NGOs have carried out a consultation among their networks of members and national experts and are providing concrete Country Specific Recommendations for 21 Member States as well as the Eurozone in general.

The European Commission President Juncker’s ‘Investment plan for growth and jobs’ is aiming at mobilising EUR 315 billion of additional investments by 2018. A proposed regulation setting up the framework of the EFSI is currently negotiated in the European Parliament and the Council and its adoption is envisaged for June 2015.

This briefing, prepared by Bankwatch, Counter Balance, Friends of the Earth Europe and WWF Europe stresses that this regulation should give clarity on how the fund will contribute to the achievement of EU long-term objectives, its added-value for the EU and the expected benefits for European citizens: all projects benefiting from the fund should explicitly accelerate the transition of Europe’s economies, infrastructure investments should aim at the decarbonisation, decentralization and decrease of energy and transport systems, R&D focusing on the absolute decoupling of resource use and production.

The European Semester should be further developed to become an effective governance and enforcement mechanism that can ensure coherence between national fiscal policies and overarching sustainable development objectives. To this extent national Environmental Fiscal Reforms (EFR) should be accelerated via the European Semester and Member States national public spending and investment plans should be checked against their delivery on sustainable development.