Online Event: For a Green recovery!

Live Webinar, co-hosted by the European Green Party - Register here!

It has been almost a year since the European Council agreed on the Next Generation EU, a €750 billion recovery effort to help the EU tackle the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the centre of this agreement, we have the Recovery and Resilience Facility, approved last February, which sets an historic step for a solidarity-based Europe with an envelope of over 670 billion in loans and grants.

In the coming weeks, the national plans are set to be approved, therefore entering in a new and critical stage of the plan: its implementation. We want to make sure the Green voice is also heard at this stage at both national and EU levels. We see this event as an opportunity to share the Green proposals and practices to make the best use of the great potential of the RRF for the recovery and to make sure the RRF catalyses the green transition. This means that we need to continue our scrutiny during the implementation phase and we would like to use this event to start working together.

Agenda of the event

13h Welcoming
Ernest Urtasun, MEP

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13:05 - 14:15h A recovery for our democracies: rule of law

The RRF can help strengthen the rule of law in Europe. We need to very carefully monitor the risks to EU financial interests in the implementation of the RRF of any breach of the principles of the rule of law, with a detailed attention to the control systems also including the wider context of the judiciary, as well as to public procurement. In particular, the milestones of the national plans linked to measures to prevent, detect and correct corruption, fraud and conflicts of interest when using the funds provided under the RFF must be met. In that sense, transparency and access to documents in the implementation phase will be a key component for scrutiny and hence for success. The Greens have been actively advocating that local and regional municipalities must be central actors for the implementation of the plans, managing an important part of the resources and fully involved in the implementation.

This panel will look at how the RRF can help strengthen the rule of law across Europe; how we can monitor its compliance related to fraud, corruption and conflicts of interests; and how we can work together to strengthen the transparency and accountability mechanisms for a better implementation.

PANEL:

Gergely Karácsony (Mayor of Budapest)
Malgorzata Tracz (Polish MP, Zieloni co-leader)
Karolis Granickas (Open Procurement EU)
Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield (MEP)
Q&A (30 min)

Moderation: Vula Tsetsi, EGP Committee Member

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14:15- 15:30 A recovery for the planet: Climate and Biodiversity

37% of the funds of the RRF will be spent on measures related to climate climate mitigation or adaptation. We have an improved tracking methodology in the Regulation for climate spending building on the EU Taxonomy framework to make sure the investments that qualify as climate actually are. Greens/EFA managed to meaningfully reduce greenwashing by updating the outdated climate tracking methodology, the “Rio Markers” from 1998. We need to effectively keep this 37% not as a general target but rather as a minimum floor. In addition, the “Do No Significant Harm” principle is of particular importance to use as a hook for challenging any carbon intensive project in the context of national plans as well as to ensure that the plans do no harm to biodiversity and the environment in general.

This panel will discuss whether all the plans are fully compliant with the climate target and properly apply the DNSH guidance, if the Commission is assessing the plans in an accurate and ambitious manner and the opportunities of investments in green projects that the RRF has opened and whether we see enough guarantees for the projects where we have doubts with compliance with the DSH guidance.

PANEL:

Anni Sinnemäki (Deputy Mayor of Helsinki)
Sven Giegold (MEP)
Felix Heilmann (Green tracker project)
Rossella Muroni (Italian MP)
Q&A (30 min)

Moderator:Damian Boeselager MEP

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15:45- 17h A recovery for the people: social and gender equality

The RRF has to contribute to the European Pillar of Social Rights, strengthen social institutions and protection systems and address adverse gender impact. A dedicated scoreboard will be fully operative by the end of the year, to display the progress of the implementation of the recovery and resilience plans of the Member States. While we did not manage to obtain as we wanted a mandatory Gender Impact Assessment (GIA), we successfully managed to include in the regulation a provision to oblige Member States to explain how their plans address gender inequalities resulting from the crisis and are closely monitoring in this context whether the gender related Country Specific Recommendations are adequately addressed.

This panel will discuss how we can use the RRF to fight against social and gender inequalities, and whether the measures included in the RRPs are adequate to address the social consequences of the pandemic and to accompany the green transition to make it just and socially inclusive and to the end of the era of misguided austerity.

PANEL: