New CEE Bankwatch Network Study: “No Time to Waste: Cohesion Funds programming for a resource-efficient Europe”

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The EU Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative, the strategic framework setting out how the waste sector should look like in Europe by 2020, envisages that by the end of this decade waste in Europe will be managed as a resource we have to care for, hence landfilling has to be eliminated, incineration limited to non recyclable materials, and recycling turned into a truly economically viable option.

The new budget of the European Union, that will cover a period of seven years after 2014, especially through its regional funds component, can and should provide the main financial means for transforming the European waste sector along the lines expounded by the Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative.

Considering the configuration of the next EU Budget emerging from the current negotiations, regional funds can be used for this goal, as long as member states of the EU are able to plan the use of this money in an intelligent way when it comes to waste management.

In order to assist national governments and regional authorities to conduct such planning in the upcoming period (member states are at the moment setting out to construct the operational programmes according to which they will spend EU funds over the next seven years), CEE Bankwatch Network has today published a set of guidelines for waste spending in the OPs. The study illustrates examples of good practices and gives advice to decision-makers over what programming pitfalls may appear and should be avoided.

“The European Union budget will provide significant resources for the member states for the next seven years and these resources must be used to implement European objectives, such as those from the Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative, especially those that promote sustainability in Europe,” comments CEE Bankwatch’s Marijan Galovic, one of the authors of the study. “Producing less waste, and reusing and recycling the waste we produce is one of the main means through which we can turn into a more resilient society; we are still in time to make this crucial transformation in our treatment of waste.”

Find the study here >>