Back

Press release
08 June 2005

Environmental groups broadly welcome European Parliament's position on EU spending plans

The Green 9 group of European environmental NGOs welcomes several key aspects of a report adopted today by the European Parliament on future European spending plans – the socalled ‘financial perspectives’.

The Green 9 particularly welcomes:

• the strong stance taken by MEPs in defending the Commission's proposed rural development budget from cuts. This is particularly important in light of the latest compromise proposal from the Luxembourg presidency which seeks to reduce the rural development budget by around one fifth compared to the Commission's proposal.

• the allocation of €21 billion over the next budget period to the financing
  of the Natura 2000 network of EU-protected wildlife sites

The Green 9 call on European leaders (who will discuss the ‘financial perspectives’ at the European Council on 16-17 June) to ensure that:

• the Parliament's recommendations on the rural development budget
  and Natura 2000 financing are reflected in the final deal on the financial
  perspectives
• at least €250 million per year is allocated to tackling globally important environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss - under the 'External Actions' heading.
• expenditure on the EU's Trans-European Transport networks (TEN-T) is prioritised on the basis of the full environmental, economic, social and health costs and benefits. This is vital as the Commission is proposing to quadruple TEN-T spending in the next budget period but is not providing the necessary information on the 'value for money' of each of the projects.

Victoria Phillips of Birdlife International said, “European leaders must commit to
making citizens and environment a top priority in any deal on the financial
perspectives.”

Contacts:

Victoria Phillips, BirdLife International
tel +44 7803 151132, email Victoria.Phillips@rspb.org.uk; vikki_phillips@hotmail.com

Dudley Curtis, Communications Officer, T&E
tel +32-2-502 9909, email dudley.curtis@t-e.nu

The Green 9 consists of nine leading environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active at EU level : BirdLife International, Climate Action Network Europe (CAN-Europe), European Environment Bureau (EEB), EPHA Environment Network (EEN), European Federation for Transport and  Environment (T&E), Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE), Greenpeace, International Friends of Nature (IFN) and WWF European Policy Office (WWF-EPO)