THE European Union’s efforts to bring Europeans closer together through its road-building social-cohesion fund conflict with its climate-change aims, Church of England bishops have warned.
In a response to the European Commission’s 2007 consultation paper Reforming the Budget, Changing Europe, the Bishops’ Europe Panel, chaired by the Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Revd Christopher Herbert, states: “We are concerned that current budgetary allocations in the field of agriculture and social cohesion impede rather than accelerate the achievement of the EU’s climate-security agenda.”
They warn: “There is a risk EU funding programmes over the next six years threaten to lock member states in to high-carbon energy and transport-infrastructure projects.”
They recommend that the EC “refocus” the budget to support low-carbon growth, and that climate change and the cohesion fund should be connected to make “low-carbon pathways for the central and eastern European member states”.
The Common Agricultural Policy uses up 43 per cent of the EU budget and needs to be aligned with low-carbon targets by cutting food miles, increasing local production, and supporting new forests, the Bishops say. The Commission should also be able to veto funds for programmes that do not help states meet their national emission targets.
The EU should also repay its “ecological debt” by compensating developing countries as they adapt to the effects of climate change. It could divert a large proportion of the income it made from auctioning emissions rights under its revised EU Emission Trading Scheme to fund adaption projects in developing countries. It should use its budget for research into green technology.
The report also backs the Green Alliance’s proposal that, at next year’s elections, EU citizens should be invited to rank how they want the EU to spend its money.
The Commission is to report on its budget proposals later this year.
In a letter in The Times on Wednesday about the Lisbon Treaty, which provides for the regulation of the expanded Union, Bishop Herbert writes that the increased membership of 27 is “a great success”. “With regard to the religious dimension to the treaty, we welcome the provision of regular, open and transparent dialogue between the Churches and the EU institution.”
In his maiden speech in the Lords on Tuesday, the Bishop of Chichester, the Rt Revd John Hind, said that the UK would have more influence in Europe if it were no longer seen as “semi-detached”. It could “draw a line under the confrontations of the past and invite us to engage in concrete projects”. |
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