Cuts to funding for green groups prompt crisis talks

Date: 15/02/01

By Laurence Frost

CASH-STRAPPED environmental groups are in crisis talks with the European Commission over cuts to their funding for EU public information work.

Green organisations say they have already lost two thirds of the €4.5 million they were receiving four years ago for one-off projects and fear the cuts could go further as officials spend more on their own information seminars, publications and video productions.

Heads of the 'G8' alliance of Brussels-based green groups recently held informal talks with Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström, whom they consider to be a firm supporter of their role in the policy process.

Campaigners are tight-lipped about progress of their talks with her officials, ahead of an internal spending review covering in-house and non-governmental organisation (NGO) projects. But insiders say there is a contradiction between the increasing use of 'stakeholder' rhetoric and weakening support among rank-and-file officials for organisations representing grassroots environmental concerns.

"We were a bit concerned that there seemed to be some bias about the outcome before the study was done," said John Hontelez, president of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). "Of course we are a nuisance to them, criticising their work day by day - but the big picture is that if we didn't exist there wouldn't be the same demand for environmental policies."

Officials now say that as a result of the talks, Wallström will ask for a 20% increase in the budget line covering longer-term NGO programmes.

The Commissioner's spokeswoman denied that the decline in one-off projects was due to a souring of relations with NGOs. "In general DG environment has very good cooperation with them," she said. "But there have been more and more demands on the information budget - we've been developing video productions. Now the same bag of money has to be divided between more people."

Environmental group Friends of the Earth also blames red tape for the slump in project funding.

"The bureaucratic burden has become so big that there's now a tendency in the services to say 'maybe we can do that better ourselves'," said European political director Martin Rocholl. The organisation says monitoring and reporting procedures can increase project costs by up to 30%.

Environmentalists also want to see a change to cumbersome rules that oblige the Commission to account for the entire cost of a project even when it is only partially funded by the Union.

But as a more 'integrated' EU environmental agenda extends to new geographical and policy areas, Rocholl believes NGOs still reach the parts that official campaigns cannot.

"Ordinary people are more willing to believe us than the Commission," he said. "Their initial reactions to an NGO brochure are more positive than they would be to an official document."

Cash-strapped environmental groups are in crisis talks with the European Commission over cuts to their funding for EU public information work.