EU

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.

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.

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.

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&E.

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.

The debates, discussions and negotiations over the EU budget for 2014-20, the so-called Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), have been bubbling behind the scenes for many months now, but in many senses they are just getting underway. This is crunch time now.