EU Commission – make up your mind!
At the beginning of this month the European Commission announced that it will invest €105 billion (£97 billion) in green projects in its latest budget, a massive increase (almost three times) on what was invested in the last round.
Four days after this announcement, it hosted an auction of 86 worthy environmental projects it does not have the money to fund, inviting individual states and private investors to back them instead.
This seemingly contradictory situation raises a number of questions; with that much money why can the EU not fund all the projects, especially as it deems them worthy and important. If the money is not going to projects… where is it going (please don’t tell me the consultants are eating all that money too?); what percentage is being swallowed up by bureaucratic form filling? Some of the answers, of course, lie in the split of where the money is going as currently identified - €54 billion (£50 billion) is to help member states to comply with EU climate change and environmental legislation… well, we’ve seen what our own Govt. does with that money; setting up body after Quango after committee; but society and the business community is still a long way off hitting not only the various targets set by the various European bodies but also reducing our footprint to a level where we can be confident of still being able to conduct business as usual in the near future.
We should not, however, allow this opportunity to pass us by in the business community. There are 86 projects that merit consideration. The CSR and environmental sections of the Companies Act 2006 (Ss. 172(1)(d) and 417(5)(b)(i) and (ii)) come into effect in October of this year and provide an excellent opportunity for large companies to review not just the environmental but also the commercial benefits of getting ‘in on the act’ with an investment that will not only deliver solutions to the problems we are continuing to create in our natural environment but also potentially adding an additional financial value-add to our commercial environment.
These projects represent business opportunities if only you can look beyond your limited crisis-management paradigm; they can deliver an ROI – financially as well as through brand ‘warmth’, good for both shareholders and new clients/customers. This does not, however, detract from the fact that there is a €105 billion colander leaking away somewhere in Brussels… a call for accountability from our own political leaders might be a good start; but then, this is Britain and we don’t like to make a fuss, do we?
To see the projects that were up for auction and that you might wish to buy to, go to: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/worldwide/environment/auction-floor_en.htm
