A collective of environmental NGOs published a letter on Wednesday 17 March calling on EU Member States to significantly improve their recovery and resilience plans before submitting them to the European Commission by the end of April, in order to accelerate the transition to climate neutrality and ecological sustainability.
The letter was published on the eve of a videoconference of EU Environment Ministers, who will discuss the role of the Recovery and Resilience Facility in greening the ‘European Semester’ budget process on Thursday (see EUROPE 12679/13).
According to these NGOs, Member States should: - allocate at least 40% of all investments to climate action and nature protection; - ensure structural reforms such as the phasing out of environmentally harmful subsidies, increased use of green public procurement, environmental tax reforms or other incentives to enable the green transition; - exclude environmentally damaging projects and “false solutions” such as fossil gas and hydroelectricity from national plans; - improve transparency and public participation.
The signatories are Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), CEE Bankwatch Network, Birdlife Europe, EuroNatur, Climate & Sustainability and Greenpeace.
See the letter: https://bit.ly/3vxUAjH (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)