E3G

Europe in the World: Summer Briefing

By Chris Littlecott

5. A European budget for the future: Europe must choose the future instead of the past. Europe must spend its financial resources on addressing future threats, with a focus on innovation and efficient, intelligent infrastructure.

The manner in which an organisation raises and spends its financial resources is a key test of its priorities. At present, the EU fails miserably. Europe will be unable to secure its security and prosperity unless it aligns its resources with the challenges it faces.

The budget review in 2008 should reallocate existing EU resources away from the old goal of food security and towards investment in climate and energy security. European structural programmes should focus on promoting intelligent infrastructure and climate proofing in the poorer member states, and to managing the risks to stability on European borders through the Neighbourhood Policy. Additional pan-European funds should be raised based on carbon emissions, and earmarked for investment in new European energy networks and collaboration on clean technology with China, India and other emerging economies.

An intelligently-focussed EU budget should set the standard for member state public spending to pursue. It should be designed to open up new business opportunities and leverage private investment from around the world in the fields of clean energy, resource efficiency and intelligent infrastructure. The contribution such a budget would make to the attainment of Europe’s goals would provide a concrete example of the benefits of cooperative EU action, creating positive public pressure for sustained investment.

Next steps

This is not an exhaustive list of choices, and there are many others that need to be made in respect to building Europe’s external capacity for action. These include areas such as migration, building stability in the European neighbourhood, supporting regional peacebuilding in Africa, tackling organised crime and building effective mechanisms for projecting European “soft power”. E3G is working with others to develop propositions in many of these areas, and will set out further options later in the year.

From early Autumn 2006, E3G will be taking forward work to catalyse action from a large range of organisations and networks around the areas identified in this briefing. E3G aims to develop a critical mass for change over the next 18 months, and will be working with individuals and organisations to identify new cross-sectoral coalitions to take forward specific areas of work.