Battle likely over EU’s ‘green’ fund

Date: 10/02/2000

By Gareth Harding

MEPS and EU governments are heading for a clash over how much money to allocate to the Union's environmental fund.

The European Commission and the Council of Ministers have agreed to set aside €613 million for LIFE III over the next five years, but MEPs are likely to follow the advice of the assembly's environment committee next week and push for this figure to be increased to €850 million.

The author of the Parliament's report, French Socialist Marie Noölle Lienemann, insists there is an urgent need for extra cash given the increased demand for funding and a rise in the number of countries eligible for money.

Although funding increased from €400 million to €450 million during the last five-year programme, Lienemann argues that this was cancelled out by the decision to add North African and central and eastern European countries to the list of those eligible for money under the scheme.

At present, applications for funding far outstrip LIFE's budget, leading to scores of projects in the nature conservation and green technology fields having to be cancelled. "I do not understand why LIFE is not a priority seeing as it is the only environmental fund and given the importance the EU attaches to the environment," said Lienemann.

If the full Parliament backs its environment committee's amendments next week, head-to-head conciliation talks will have to take place between MEPs and governments to try to thrash out a compromise. However, national officials warn that member states are unlikely to agree to provide more cash for the scheme.

Over the next few months, a raft of other contentious environmental proposals will also have to be dealt with by the conciliation committee, which is tasked with settling disputes between the EU's two law-making bodies.

MEPs are likely to call for a significant strengthening of draft EU legislation on water quality next week after the environment committee voted in favour of more than 90 amendments aimed at limiting proposed derogations and introducing stricter limits for pollutants.

However, water companies and national authorities will breathe a sigh of relief that the committee rejected calls for users to be made to pay the full costs of the water they consume within a decade.

Conciliation talks will also have to be convened over the proposed end-of-life vehicles directive following the assembly's knife-edge vote last week.

Although MEPs narrowly rejected calls for car-owners to share the costs of scrapping vehicles with manufacturers, they pushed back the date when the recycling targets would have to be met and voted to exempt vintage cars from the proposal.

MEPs and EU governments are heading for a clash over how much money to allocate to the Union's environmental fund. The European Commission and the Council of Ministers have agreed to set aside €613 million for LIFE III over the next five years, but MEPs are likely to follow the advice of the assembly's environment committee and push for this figure to be increased to €850 million.