EU funds

As countries around Europe strive in the first weeks of the year to conclude spending plans that will guide how they deploy billions of EU funds for the 2014-2020 budgetary period, last week saw a welcome move in Poland with the shelving of a controversial airport proposal that had been in line for EU support.

With only a few weeks to go now until final crucial decisions are taken that will determine Hungary's EU spending plans for the next seven years, Bankwatch's Hungarian member group MTVSZ decided last week that it was about time the Hungarian government got its house in order when it comes to beneficial EU allocations for cutting domestic energy bills, stimulating the Hungarian economy and fighting climate change.

The manipulation of a tender for a metro line extension in Prague - financially supported via EU funds and the European Investment Bank (EIB) has not only resulted in a huge EU funds fine, but also raises questions about the EIB's ability to identify and avoid mismanagement in the infrastructure projects it finances.

With less than three months to go until the 2014-2020 EU budgetary period gets underway, a Bulgarian Partnership Agreement is being discussed with the European Commission – but the less said about it the better. In the spirit, though, of a country where a shake of the head means ‘Yes’, we have chosen to spill the beans at some length on where familiar mistakes are being taken, and where they may lead.

The likely allocation of EU funds is set to bring about a breakthrough success for a popular and dearly needed campaign for better air quality in Krakow, Poland.

Cohesion Policy decisions are heating up at national level while financial allocations for the period 2014-2020 have been published this week.

There is a big long list of technical jargon attached to the programming documents of the EU funds for the 2014-2020 funding period – enough to fill an entire blog post on its own. But you will be relieved to read that, in the context of Latvia’s ongoing negotiations as to how we will spend our future EU budget money, I will focus on only one of these items. It may be a bit of a mouthful, but it is what it says it is – only in Latvia, as environmental NGOs are discovering, what should be a safeguard for the environment appears to have gone missing.