EU's environmental failures expose its structural flaws

EUobserver reports today yet another high profile failure in the EU's grand-style, centralised policy-making, adding to a list that includes, most notably, the huge waste and imbalances of the Common Agricultural Policy, the depleted fish stocks of the Common Fisheries Policy and the euro austerity crisis.

Around 75 'green' NGOs are calling jointly for the EU to scrap its flagship environmental scheme for trading carbon emissions - the ETS - accusing the scheme of actually increasing carbon emissions instead of reducing them.

According to the EU, the ETS scheme is "a cornerstone of the European Union's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively." It covers more than 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 31 countries, as well as airlines.

But environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Carbon Trade Watch, say that by distracting from the task of reducing consumption and dependency on fossil fuels, the scheme has caused emissions to rise.

They also highlight how the EU-ETS facility to import cheaper emissions permits from abroad in return for the polluter supporting 'offset' projects in developing countries has provoked land-grabs, human rights violations and related environmental damage in poverty-stricken regions.

'Life support'

In recent months the EU-ETS has been described as being on "life-support" due to a collapse in the price of its carbon permits - the opposite of the scheme's intention. The EU hoped that higher carbon permit prices would incentivise businesses to cut emissions or invest in clean technologies.

Companies have blamed government handouts of too many free permits in order to limit the initial impact of the scheme on the highest polluters and are supporting a European Commission proposal to suspend future permit auctions, hoping that consumption of credits in the interim will prop up prices. MEPs on the European Parliament's environment committee are due to vote tomorrow on the Commission's proposed reform.

The scheme's faults mirror the EU's similarly ill-judged rush to promote biofuels through dramatic targets and offering generous subsidies to grow fuel crops. The result has been large-scale deforestation in developing countries as land was cleared for growing these newly lucrative crops, together with a dramatic rise in food prices as farmers cashed in by switching millions of acres from food production.

Faulty structure

There are huge questions here, of course, about the merits or otherwise of biofuels and about how best to manage and preserve our natural environment.

But the far more fundamental question these failures should provoke is about whether the EU represents the best structure for effective decision-making on the now wide range of policy areas affecting our lives over which it has control.

The course of the EU's development has now demonstrated repeatedly through the increasing number of 'grands projets' emerging from its structure that over-centralised decisions, made by institutions too far removed from democratic accountability, are much more likely to be of poor quality and detrimental to Europe's security and prosperity.

Break down the elements of EU decision-making and its easy to see how this comes about.

First policy ideas are boiled down to the lowest common denominator in order to secure majority support in the Council of Ministers, often involving persuasion based not on the merits of the policy in question but on horse-trading over the benefits a country or countries could gain from a completely separate forthcoming EU decision. 

Second, the counter-balancing and constructive pressure of having to answer to voters on pain of losing their jobs, perks and privileges is not something felt by the vast majority involved in make EU decisions. Not even large numbers of MEPs who, thanks to the list system the European Parliament employs, enjoy safe seats by virtue of being near the top of their party's slate of candidates.

Third, majority voting on most policy areas in the Council of Ministers prevents those countries that disagree with an EU policy or strategy (perhaps rightly) opting out of its effects, resulting in these poor quality decisions and the resulting damage being imposed uniformly on a pan-continental scale.

Finally, when policies go wrong, the cumbersome structure and huge turning circle of the EU means that changing course and limiting the damage takes years. Despite EU biofuels policy having being roundly criticised now for several years, no change is expected before 2020. Even then, the EU's inherent faults mean new decisions are unlikely to be better constructed.

EU unfit

The growing evidence of failed policies confirms the view of many that the EU's structure simply isn't fit to make decisions of the quality required in the huge areas of policy with which it is today entrusted.

Its activities on the environment have shown vividly the damage its poor decisions can cause, but this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg relative to the effect of EU decisions in the many other policy areas in which it governs with longer or more obscure feedback cycles. 

Damage to the environment is bad enough. The detrimental impact of intrinsicly poor EU decision-making on a wide range of policies imposed over an entire continent should give far greater cause for worry with respect to Europe's future prospects.

The best solution would be for the accountable leaders of the EU's member governments to open their eyes and take steps to reinvent fundamentally the EU's structure to become more flexible, dynamic, accountable and attuned to Europe's 21st century needs rather than those of the 1950s.

Since the multiplicity of interests propping up the existing structure makes this highly unlikely, it is Britain's relationship with the EU that must in fact be rebuilt from first principles - those of trade, co-operation and cultural exchange, rejecting outdated and flawed centralisation.

Brown slapped down by EU over biofuels

Gordon Brown is set to "push for changes" in EU biofuels targets if a government review launched in February shows that they are to blame for driving up food prices and environmental damage.

Quoted in a Reuters report filed at 12:43 today, the Prime Minister said "We need to look closely at the impact on food prices and the environment of different production methods and to ensure we are more selective in our support (for biofuels)."

"If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets," he said.

However in an embarrassing put-down a matter of hours later, a European Commission spokesman played down the prospects of change.

Quoted in a later EUobserver report filed at 18:07, a spokeman for Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said that the EU's executive stood by its target of getting 10% of road transport fuel from crops and agricultural waste by 2020.

Confirming that the Commission had requested its own study into links between biofuels policy and rising food prices, spokesman Mark Gray said "The president is not however considering changing the ten percent biofuels target."

Pressure for biofuels u-turn

Pressure is mounting on policymakers for a review of biofuels policy from international organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations World Food Programme in the light of growing reports of a food crisis and protected landscapes being cleared for biofuel crop production.

The PM's only chance of forcing change, should the government review confirm the targets as extremely damaging, is to go begging to the EU to change their policy.

Even if the Commission were to propose a change, the plan would still have to pass the hurdle of majority voting in the EU Council of Ministers, where a majority for change would by no means be assured.

Rather than elect a government, it seems we now simply elect lobbyists to run to those who really hold power ... in Brussels.

When exactly this became the limit of ambition for our country exhibited by much of today's governing class will have to be a question for another time.

EU's rush to biofuels key factor in food crisis

There are increasing signs that the rush for biofuels - in which the EU is playing a major role - is a key factor in the growing world food crisis and causing increasing global instability.

Under the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, from this month all petrol and diesel sold at British pumps must include at least 2.5% biofuels - renewable fuels, made from crops such as sugar cane or maize.

This target is set to rise to 5% by 2010, towards achieving 10% of vehicle traffic powered by biofuels by 2020.

These are targets that the EU has instructed the government to meet, initially via its Directive on the Promotion of the use of biofuels and other renewable fuels for transport (2003/30/EC) .

This Directive stipulates that national measures must be taken by countries across the EU aiming at replacing 5.75% of all transport fossil fuels with biofuels by 2010, and the European Commission back in January this year proposed a new Directive setting the '10% by 2020' target.

Result of EU targets

The consequences of this action were set out quite comprehensively in yesterday's Guardian.

Spurred by generous subsidies from the US government and these EU targets to increase the use of biofuels, at least 8m hectares (20m acres) of maize, wheat, soya and other crops which once provided animal feed and food have been taken out of production in the US - a major supplier to UK fuel companies now having to meet the new targets in their products.

Additionally, large areas of Brazil, Argentina, Canada and eastern Europe are diverting sugar cane, palm oil and soybean crops to feed the new thirst for biofuels.

The result, exacerbated by energy price rises, speculation and shortages because of severe weather, has been big increases of all global food commodity prices.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said this week that prices of all staple food had risen 80% in three years, and that 33 countries faced unrest because of the price rises. The bank predicts rice price rises of 55% in 2008.

Protests in world's poorest countries

The crisis has already sparked protests and even riots in the world's poorest countries, including Guinea, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Haiti, Bolivia, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, the Philippines and Thailand.

Many of these countries are reacting by placing export restrictions on home-grown staple foods and drastically cutting duties and taxes on imports.

In Bangladesh, where families spend up to 70% of income on food, more than 50,000 households are getting emergency food after rice price rises. A government source said: "One reason is that the overall drop in food production because of biofuels has prevented food being exported."

Josette Sheeran, director of the World Food Programme, said in Ethiopia this week: "The cost of our food has doubled in just the last nine months. We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. Often we are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it."

Friends of the Earth claim that biofuels are not only pushing up food prices, but they are also linked to human rights abuses and land-grabs from the poor. The group is calling for EU targets for increasing biofuel use by adding it to petrol to be scrapped.

Targets threaten natural habitats

In addition to the problems for food production, a separate article in the following day's Guardian cites an example in Kenya to demonstrate the environmental consequences of the EU's rush for biofuels.

The article takes a look at the Tana river delta - lush wetlands on the east coast of Africa teeming with birds and home to hippos and crocodiles, lions and elephants - set to be the latest victim of the EU-driven thirst for biofuels.

To meet demand, Kenya's Mumias Sugar Company is planning to plant 20,000 hectares of the Tana delta to grow sugar cane for biofuels and food.

Environmental campaigners say that the £165m project, including an ethanol refinery and food-processing plant, would destroy the wetlands - home to 345 species of birds considered 'internationally important' to the global populations.

They claim that if the project is approved, large areas would become 'ecological deserts', destroying wintering grounds for birds and the bugs they feed on, and dams would divert water essential to wildlife and cattle herders during the dry season.

Paul Matiku, executive director of campaign group Nature Kenya, is also worried about water diversion causing soil erosion, pollution harming fish stocks and damage to the nascent tourism industry.

"This development would be a national disaster, wreaking havoc with the area's ecosystem and spelling the end for wildlife across much of the delta," he said.

Government not in charge

In a sign of growing splits within government, last week the former Environment minister Elliot Morley called for the government to delay the new biofuel requirement until 'comprehensive certification and assessment schemes are put in place', echoing criticism by the Environment Department's chief scientific adviser, Professor Robert Watson.

However, Mr Morley appears to be unaware of the extent to which the government is only acting according to EU instructions - as decided by majority vote in the EU Council of Ministers - and has little choice but to push biofuels as a means to achieve EU targets.

While the EU defends itself by pointing to regulations governing the sustainability of biofuel production, critics claim that EU-led demand will indirectly cause supplies to be sucked in from other markets, which would then be forced to turn to new suppliers like Mumias.

Beyond democratic debate

Whatever people's views on the merits or otherwise of biofuels, the most dangerous aspect of this is that it is one of an increasing number of policy areas that, decisions having been handed to the EU, have now been removed from democratic debate.

Under the EU's treaties, our elected government is forced to take this action regardless of domestic public opinion or even the views of its own ministers as the targets are stipulated by the EU Directive.

Within the EU, where such Directives are shaped, decisions are made on environmental policy by majority voting in the Council of Ministers.

This means that those we take the trouble to elect can be over-ruled by ministers from other EU member countries - completely unaccountable to people here - even if they did object to the policy and the targets imposed regardless. Under EU Treaties, the government is then committed to implementing them.

This is the undemocratic nature of government the European Union project has created for those in all its member countries.

Through the likes of the Lisbon Treaty, passing more powers to EU institutions, making more policy areas subject to majority voting, the state of democracy on our continent is degrading ever more rapidly.

How many outside the political elite and those who benefit financially from the EU system seriously still believe that this is a stable or sustainable path for the future of our continent?