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Metals for a Green and Digital Europe- An Agenda for Action

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Context

The climate crisis leaves us no choice but to make a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. However, while energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind is nearly infinite, the resources we need to capture it are not. Solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and power cables all contain metals. Their various properties, including toughness and conductivity, make metals uniquely suitable for renewable energy technologies. But first they must be extracted from ores that are dug up from the ground. Because of its decentralised nature, a renewable energy system requires far larger quantities of metals than a fossil energy system.

 

The more energy we harvest from the skies above our heads, the deeper we will have to dig for the metals beneath our feet.

 

Objectives

Both the energy transition and the digital transition require large quantities of metals, such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth. As a result, Europe must face up to various types of scarcity. This Agenda for Action sets out how we can achieve the sparing, circular use of metals and the responsible sourcing of the virgin metals that we really need.

 

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This publication is part of the Metals for a Green and Digital Europe project. The project is led by Wetenschappelijk Bureau GroenLinks and supported by Fundacja Strefa Zieleni, Institut Aktivního Občanství, the Green Economics Institute, Etopia, Visio, and Transición Verde, with Cogito from Sweden providing additional expertise.

The Guide to EU Funding on Migration and Asylum

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In the absence of a common European response that treats migration as a human phenomenon and manages it as such, the task of welcoming and accommodating migrants and acting as their first personal contacts has mainly been taken on by local and regional authorities, non-governmental organisations and activists, who continue to play a key role in providing initial reception and access to services and fundamental rights for migrants and refugees. In this context, this guide builds on the idea that the best practices of how to welcome refugees and asylum seekers and work towards successful integration can be found in local communities and initiatives throughout Europe.

Therefore, the objective of this guide is to actively support the work of these local actors, organisations and institutions with a one-stop source of information on additional financial assistance offered by the EU. This guide provides a quick and easy overview of the relevant EU funding opportunities, with key information and practical inputs in regards to accessing them. Special attention is given to projects that foster integration, social inclusion and a better quality of life for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

A hard copy of this guide can be ordered by sending an email to: info@gef.eu

This publication as a PDF file is available for download in following versions:

Class of 2014: New Green Voices in the European Parliament

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Back in 2009, when the Green European Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation gathered, for the first time, the ambitions of newly elected Green Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in a yearbook, the European Union was a different type of affair. The effects of the financial and economic crises were not yet in full swing, austerity measures had not yet become the buzz-word of the political agenda, and the climate summit in Copenhagen was still preserving the hope that the European Union would deliver on its promises to be the world’s climate champion. Although clouds were on the horizon, the general mood in European circles was still very much business as usual.

Five years later, we are faced with a different scenario. The effects of the economic and financial crises, as well as the social impact of the austerity-driven response to these crises, had raised existential questions about the future of the European Union. Euro-scepticism reached unprecedented levels, and parties campaigning on explicitly anti-European platforms made gains across the Union. Citizens’ movements reacting to austerity measures imposed by “Brussels” made clear the popular disenchantment with a political establishment that seemed keener on bailing out banks than safeguarding jobs and welfare. There were times as recent as two years ago when the European Union seemed to be facing “make it or break it” types of challenges.

Even though this urgency has passed for now, the crisis is far from over. This is the background in which the newly-elected Green MEPs will be working over the next years.

New challenges, new voices

In a context where anti-European debates are likely to be placed in the spot-light, the challenge for the new Green Group will be to articulate their criticisms to the various EU policy approaches that venture off the paths of sustainability, equity, democracy and respect for fundamental rights, while keeping an overall pro-European narrative. Among this new Green group, there are many new, first-time parliamentarians. They will need dedication, imagination and an understanding of the need to reach out to civil society and grassroots movements to come up with successful policy approaches to the difficult tasks ahead: setting ambitious climate targets; tackling energy security and energy poverty; bringing prosperity back to the EU; ensuring a humane migration policy, and responding to new geopolitical realities.

The articles that make up this collection detail the new MEPs’ ambitions, expectations and analyses of the opportunities and challenges lying ahead in their specific policy fields. The articles discuss both the visions of the EU that they are bringing to Brussels, by reflecting on the messages picked up during the elections’ campaigns, as well as how these visions translate in a Green working project in the European Parliament. The contributions describe the biggest challenges for the upcoming years on topics such as greening the economy, transforming energy policy, building a democratic EU, creating a human-rights based migration policy, positioning the EU as a strong and fair global player in areas of trade, agriculture, foreign affairs – to mention but a few. Finally, the authors reflect on their ambitions from the various policies they’ll be focusing on and note their expectations for their parliamentary mandate.

 

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Class of 2014 EN 1.75 MB 45 downloads

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Class of 2014 FR 2.39 MB 99 downloads

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Class of 2014 DE 2.41 MB 47 downloads

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Parts of the articles are available also in the respective native languages of the authors: Catalan, Croatian, HungarianSwedish and Spanish.