The announcement was eagerly awaited, especially by the Eastern European member states. To convince the last recalcitrant countries to adhere to the European carbon neutrality objective in 2050, Ursula von der Leyen had promised to release a hundred billion euros to help the economies most dependent on coal and other fossil fuels to moult. Tuesday, January 14, the President of the European Commission announced the terms of his plan – the “fair transition mechanism” – designed so that the “green deal” “Do not put on” red caps “or” yellow vests “everywhere in Europe”, explains a relative of the case.
And it is not certain that these give any satisfaction to Prague, Budapest or Zagreb, which hesitated a lot before committing themselves, at the end of last year, for carbon neutrality within thirty years. Nor did they convince Warsaw, today the last of the Twenty-Eight to have still not adhered to this community objective.
The total sum promised of 100 billion euros between 2021 and 2027 – a period which corresponds to Europe’s next multiannual budget – is there. For the most part, it is not fresh money. In total, Europeans add just over ten billion to what they planned to spend over the period concerned. For the rest, they plan to redirect structural funds, traditionally devoted to the development of the poorest regions, to which the Eastern and Central European countries are very attached, towards ecological transition. And count on the leverage that the release of some of this money will trigger.
A fair transition fund of 7.5 billion euros
The fair transition mechanism, as designed by the Commission, uses three channels. The first is through the fair transition fund, which will be endowed with 7.5 billion euros. Each euro allocated to help a State carry out its ecological transition will free up between 1.5 and 3 euros, which will be taken from cohesion funds. The states concerned by this aid will also be called upon, all the more as their national wealth per inhabitant will be high.
In total, therefore, this 7.5 billion will finance between 30 and 50 billion euros of projects that the countries concerned will have previously discussed with Brussels. They will be able to finance industrial conversions as well as job creation or professional training. The Commission also foresees that this money can be used by big companies, in particular to buy carbon dioxide emission allowances within the framework of the emission trading system set up by the European Union.
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