A green agenda for South East Europe conference

Door Marianna Tsirelson, stagiaire AMS  
 
Countries in South East Europe are taking the environmental issue serious, but face problems with implementing EU policies and regulations on a local level due to a lack of financial resources and an effective administrative approach. Also from an economic point of view coherent and strong environmental policies are extremely needed as they are the key for long-term sustainable economic growth in the 21st century.

 

Egbert de Vries, chairman of the Dutch Labour party (PvdA) delegation to the Party of European Socialists (PES), outlined the importance of implementing environmental policies by the local governments. Besides that the private sector as well as the public sector should cooperate to achieve effective implementation. Climate change is one of the most serious problems, which is mainly caused by inefficient energy use. National policies should raise public awareness on the effect of climate change and stimulate people to reduce the use of energy. At the same time the private sector needs to invest more in innovative energy technology. Policies of the PES are aiming to reach the EU goal of reducing Co2 emissions by 20% by 2020. 
 
The conference showed that the biggest problem faced by the countries concerns waste management. In Slovenia it is a real problem, as the country has no effective waste collection system and there is no recycling system. It plans to do more on waste prevention, promote minimal waste disposal and minimise the dangers of disposed waste.
 
Other main priorities in the region were air quality and pollution, energy efficiency, energy supply diversification, and the lack of education. Nuclear energy was also a topic that raised much debate. Representatives of social democratic parties, environmental NGOs and foundations from the regions agreed that nuclear energy plays a big role in cutting Co2 emissions, but only in the short run given the dangers of nuclear waste and the fact that uranium is also a limited resource.
 
The environment issue is addressed in all the social-democratic parties from the region and an environmentally oriented faction is represented in almost all the national Parliaments. Yet in some countries social-democrats are in opposition and therefore lack the opportunity to have an impact on the issue, such as it is the case in Macedonia, Albania and Croatia. Also the important role of environmental NGOs was raised, which try to influence the decision-making process by lobbying at various levels and maintaining cooperative relations with the government to put the issue on the political agenda. Participants discussed that NGOs should not loose their neutral political character and stay independent otherwise they could loose their credibility.