European expert platform on environmental taxation and green fiscal reform

Transcription

1 European expert platform on environmental taxation and green fiscal reform Startup-Session of Green Budget Europe/International Nov. 4, Brussels Sans but lucratif but with many great objectives We have ambitious targets, both for the evolution of our new NGO and think tank as well as for stronger environmental policies in Europe By Dr Anselm Görres, President GBE Content (Version: November 19, 2014) Page Abstract: Stronger structures, bolder strategies, greener Europe 2 A. Welcome to the first Annual General Assembly of the new GBE! 2 B. Architecture and goals of the new organisation 3 1 From the first office in Brussels to a re-foundation of GBE 3 2 New structures to support our roles and strategies 4 3 Our network should grow more roots in our members countries 6 4 I know we appear too Nordic, let s go East and South! 7 C. Evolving our strategy with more ambitious positions 7 1 Great vision, with need for a bit more detail 7 2 Let us quickly complete our catalogue of political demands 8 3 There should be more focus on sectoral strategies 8 4 Let s not forget social fairness 9 5 High-ranking support for our evolution in Germany SansButLucratif-ButManyGreatGoals0%.docx 15-Dec-14 2:20 PM Digital version under ButManyGreatGoals.pdf Rue du Trône 4 (postal address) Avenue Marnix 28 (visitor s entrance) B-1000 Brussels T: F: GBE@green-budget.eu Green Budget Europe is the European part of Green Budget International AISBL (Association internationale sans but lucratif)

2 Page 2 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Abstract: Stronger structures, bolder strategies, greener Europe With new structures, new members, and a new legal name (Green Budget International AISBL), the renewed Green Budget Europe as NGO under Belgian Law is well prepared to carry on the successful growth and evolution of the first phase from 2008 to In the new organisation, NGOs will presumably bear a larger part of the management responsibilities, whereas the inputs from researchers and academics will find better expression in the newly created Academic Committee. From the original construction as a project within Green Budget Germany (GBG Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft FÖS e.v.), the organisation will operate from 2015 as a truly European structure with six founding members, among them five NGOs and one individual. After spending a lot of energy on organisational issues over the last months, we hope to resume speed in all our main functions, namely to work as a well-respected think tank and to promote ambitious targets and MBI-policies through our advocacy work at the EU level, in member countries, and beyond the EU to grow in influence by expanding our professional network of MBI experts. In particular, we need to complete our list of priority demands, should expand in our competencies to contribute to comprehensive sectoral policy mixes and to some degree, be open to the important lessons from the social reform movement of the last two centuries. A. Welcome to the first Annual General Assembly of the new GBE! On this beautiful morning, six founding members had an appointment with Mme. Guillemyn, notary public of the Kingdom of Belgium, who gracefully came to these lovely GBEpremises. She made us show our passports or ID-cards and gave us a short instruction about our duties and our new statutes, and she read to us the entire statues in French. An hour later, the legal part of the founding ceremony of the new Société International Sans But Commercial Green Budget International was already over and a new board with seven members was established. Later this day, we will have opportunity to raise a glass or two to this great moment. Unfortunately, the mandate of this new board will only last for two hours when we will collectively resign to make room for the election of a new board by all members who are present here. We are doing this with great confidence that most members of the original board will be re-elected into the next board, perhaps reinforced by further new board members to join us in forming the new leadership body of the new association. So if you want, you may consider this to be also my speech as candidate. Part of the legal character of this NGO is to pursue no commercial goals (dépourvue de tout but lucratif) but let me assure you:

3 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Page 3 At this founding day, we are full of energy and inspiration, and we have no commercial goals but quite a long list of objectives. Not only for today and tomorrow, not only for the growth and successful evolution of our new organisation, but also ambitious political targets for a greener Europe. Let me quickly give you an outline of the next two days. Today the main focus will be on setting up the new organisation, what with proper procedures, board elections, planning our activities for the next few month and the coming year, etc. You have the agenda before you. To do it all properly, let me first ask you whether you accept this agenda. And then, whether you accept Eike moderating the morning session and James the afternoon s. B. Architecture and goals of the new organisation 1 From the first office in Brussels to a re-foundation of GBE Let me talk only shortly about the organisational aspects of the works since I prefer to spend more time talking about our contents. As I mentioned before, opening a presence in Brussels in 2012 was a great help, for the lobby work even a bit more than for our think tank activities. Some members in the last year must have gained the impression that most of our work was dominated by structural reform and legal issues like our new statutes etc. This is certainly true for the work of the Vice Presidents in the Task Force, later transformed into Executive Board (EB). I myself had that impression, simply judging from the mails I received and the meetings and calls I attended. The actual truth is much, much better. The GBE-Team, including Kai, continued the lobby work sponsored by the foundations of CIFF and Velux, without much help from the Task Force or the transitory EB. They simply kept the show running without much support from us and allowed us to concentrate on the organisational issues. So before I continue, let me first thank the entire team for keeping up their missionary work. lobbying activities and event management while Eike, myself and the EB debated about the re-foundation process. Let us thank Jacqueline Cottrell and Constanze Adolph for their persistence, not only in the question of being in Brussels but also in preparing the path for an independent refoundation of GBE. This also includes Eike Meyer who came here last spring to prepare and manage the transition process. Rozan Consten joined shortly later as indispensable Project officer and our newest reinforcement is our intern Nathalie Schmit. In the background, there was always Damian Ludewig who bore much more than just the formal legal responsibility on his shoulders, All of you have done a fantastic job. The present team is also representing an entire generation of enthusiastic interns and volunteers who did important work from our Berlin office, or even the Munich office from where we started the project preceding GBE, namely our EU-wide newsletter GreenBudgetNews, in the years 2001/2002. GREEN BUDGET EUROPE (GBE)

4 Page 4 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe At this time, I would also thank our great Vice Presidents and members of our Management Board, who have put in extra time and devoted two extra days in Brussels in order to promote the new structures and find a new director. And this is of course also the right time to welcome our new director from January 2015, James Nix from Dublin. Strengthening our think tank and lobby activities is a process of professionalization. It does not grow as automatically or organically over time as our network will grow. It needs a conscious and permanent effort and investment. After clarifying the remaining organisational issues to be settled, we should devote the rest of the day to ideas, how we can improve our output as lobbyists and think tank workers. I am positive that there will be many new ideas and initiative from all of you. But first let me point out now why I believe the new organisation will help us to move forward and in what directions it should grow. 2 New structures to support our roles and strategies a. Adding some new pillars to our new edifice As we all are aware, GBE over the years has developed three pillars: 1. A European, partly international, network of MBI-experts. All of these people are working in and around the field of market based instruments, often for many years. 2. A think tank, specialized not so much in own primary research, but in digesting, focussing and disseminating the research from others into policy papers and debates. 3. And since the opening of our first foothold in Brussels (2012), increasingly also a lobbying organisation. But if we want to expand, we must develop at least two more pillars. 4. On a small scale until today, and only case by case, we provide policy advice and consultancy for governments both within and beyond the European Union. Recently, this was the case in countries like Cyprus, Tunisia, and Mauritius and other island states in the African and Indian Ocean. I am sure, those involved, primarily Jacq and Kai, will continue strengthening that pillar. Others like Eike and Damian have also contributed. 5. If we want to get stronger and less dependent from generous donors, probably we must develop a fifth pillar and become a professional fundraising organisation. Green Budget Germany owes part of its strong growth, particularly in the second decade of our history, to the development of a much more active acquisition of projects, partly also fundraising. It would be neither realistic nor very fair to build our financing on the contributions from a membership that with our topics never will be able to contribute a big share of the total costs and that by their typical composition, with very few people from the world of wealth or big business, can afford only rather modest contributions. In that sense, we still won t have commercial goals, but we certainly need to have financial goals. If you fight for market based instruments in a market based society, you must be competitive when it comes to fundraising. Sometimes I am tempted to add event management and travel agency as a sixth element. Because in the course of a typical GBE-year, the team organizes many events and travels

5 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Page 5 not only throughout Europe but, often enough, also in other continents. Of course, these activities are an integral part of our projects. Our new organisation is designed to strengthen all of these pillars. How do we achieve this? b. Better division of labour between the thinkers and the doers Or should I say: between the academics and the NGO-managers? I realize of course, that with GBE, all our thinkers are also great doers, and all our doers are also great thinkers. But our practice has shown over the years that our academic members, for several reasons, tend to be less interested in the administration of our organisation. They tend to get involved for certain issues only, or certain periods only. Most of them are not keen on selecting staff members or scrutinizing our own budgets (much as we are all interested in other budgets). This is not meant to say that the NGOs are not interested in content, or ignorant about it. But the day-to-day management of our lobby work, of our events etc. demands more frequent meetings and administrative work than, for instance, the definition and evolution of our political contents and targets. As an implication, we will have two bodies, however they are called formally or we will call them in the future. The management board takes care of managing the organisation. The advisory committee has their focus on our content. Of course the two must interact. In the old SteeCom, all sides were represented. For the transition phase, we defined an inner circle called task force or executive board which met much more frequently. From this experience, we hope that the new Advisory Committee will help us to improve our work with contents, in-depth analysis and academic insights, and thus make it more attractive for the thinkers to get more involved with GBE. c. Higher share of management responsibility for NGOs and similar institutions We also want to become more attractive as partners for NGOs and other non-profit bodies like the IEEP and the Aldersgate Group in the UK. Do not worry, because like in the past, we will always nourish our strong bonds with devoted individuals after all, many of them have helped to build our GBE from zero. But individual experts can change their seats, their employers, their entire profession or their professional status. They may turn to new research subjects or to new institutions that may not want them to get involved and exposed in public policy debates. In comparison, institutional members can be hoped to provide more stability and continuity. If someone is sick or absent, there usually is a defined replacement. In most cases, NGOs are also better equipped for faster policy reactions and for continuous lobby work. For these and more reasons, we want to give NGOs and other non-profit bodies more influence in the control of the organisation. We hope them to supply the majority of the management board members, we give them double voting right in the AGM compared to single voting right for individual members. You may suspect Green Budget Germany, who up to now was the sole legal owner of GBE, to try and keep this organisation in the hands of a very limited number of NGOs, because we at GBG are an NGO ourselves. I will not contradict you here. It is true that in our GREEN BUDGET EUROPE (GBE)

6 Page 6 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe eyes, this start-up formation is the best solution to safeguard stability and to minimize surprises. But of course in the longer run, there is democratic constitution, majorities and memberships can change, and so the future is open to whatever the members will decide. Who would have thought in 2008, that only six years later the young baby from then has become a healthy grown-up, and this very morning, has left the paternal home? Allow me at this point to share my personal emotions with you. I am the father of three adult girls, all of which have left their home over the last years. So I know what I m talking about. But like with the leaving home of daughters, there are always some worries for parents, but a normal parent will share the joy of their kids to grow, expand and find a new life for themselves. This is also true today for all of us from the former mother organisation GBG. d. Making us more attractive for members and donors As everywhere else in life, if you want to get people more involved you have to offer them more participation. This is what we are doing with our new constitution. Perhaps not for everyone, but at least for some of you, there were some reservations in regard to a structure that ultimately is controlled from one national organisation only, namely GBG in Berlin. This was also mentioned by some members as an obstacle for fundraising in their countries. In the past, I believe our practice was clearly more democratic than our legal structures, since we took no decisions without the consent of the Steering Committee, or since the beginning of this year, without the Executive Board we created to guide us through this transformation. But real democracy in a truly European organisation, properly based here in Brussels, is certainly better than only virtual independence. We hope that by opening direct membership to everyone, whether institutional members or individual ones, we are making a big step to remove former hurdles and obstacles. So we are looking forward to many new members and a much higher inflow of money from all over Europe. 3 Our network should grow more roots in our members countries Of the various elements mentioned above, I am convinced our network is by far the most precious element. As you know, with many of you, the bonds go even back to the years before 2008, in not a few cases we are talking of one or two decades of cooperation. So there are also many links of grown friendships to carry and guide GBE and GBI into the future. And I am equally convinced, our network is the foundation for everything else what we do, whether lobby work or think tank. I do not have any worries about the future evolution of the network. This growth comes quite organically, and we can only further and foster it by expanding our organisation and our numerous activities.

7 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Page 7 There is one point I would love to promote stronger. But from Brussels alone, we have only limited potential to influence the progress being made in individual countries. I am talking about national networks around Green Budget reform and MBI-tools. We have just celebrated 20 years of GBG/ FÖS e.v. in Berlin. I wish we had more similar networks and NGOs in other countries as well. We must find ways and ideas to get Green Budget-NGOs in other countries. They don t need to be exact clones of GBE or GBG but they should put the focus on economic instruments and the economic framework of the society as we do it. This leads me directly to my next point. 4 I know we appear too Nordic, let s go East and South! The present composition of GBE is no coincidence. Too a large degree, it does reflect that within the EU, the North-West has usually a stronger level of environmental awareness, a more active civil society and a much more vivid NGO-scene. But it would be the biggest mistake if we did not try to change this overrepresentation. Also with the help of some of our sponsors, we make targeted efforts to support ecotax and similar debates in some of the Latin countries or Eastern Europe. As one positive example, due not the least to Aldo Ravazzi s constant efforts, we are building much more contacts with Institutions and individuals from Italy. I think it also has a lot to do with the new political majorities in Italy and the Italian Presidency. We are aware of another weakness in the formation of the board: Almost exclusively men! We will not to change that overnight, but the door is open for more women to engage. C. Evolving our strategy with more ambitious positions 1 Great vision, with need for a bit more detail Our overall vision is quite clear. We dream of a competitive, prosperous EU where prices tell the economic, social and ecological truth. We want the EU to be a leader in innovative, pioneering technologies as well as innovative policy tools that drive the global transition to a green economy. We want a fairer, more just society where polluters pay now for the damage they cause, instead of leaving future generations to pick up the bill. What we do not have spelled out as detailed as we want are the individual steps we want to take first, and in what order. This was fortunately the only part of our work which has suffered under the great amount of energy and time it took us to develop new structures and new statutes. Hopefully, today will be our last occasion for a long time where we still need to devote a considerable part of the day to issues of structure and management. I am confident that 2015 will be a year to rediscover and redevelop our contents. GREEN BUDGET EUROPE (GBE)

8 Page 8 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe For this work in the coming year I want to propose the following priorities. 2 Let us quickly complete our catalogue of political demands This project was started in the early months of 2013 but it really suffered most from the time we spent on structural reform debate. It virtually came to a stop throughout the entire year of We must resume it with urgency. Not only politicians we talk to, but as I am convinced, likewise every member, every journalist, every donor and other partners have a legitimate expectation to know what we stand for. Here is one big difference to researchers and academics. They also have restrictions, but usually they also enjoy a certain freedom of choice when deciding what they want to study and research and what they want to publish about. They can choose big issues or tiny issues, national ones or regional ones or global ones etc. We, in contrast, need to develop a canon of top priorities. With growing influence and reputation, there also goes a growing responsibility to set the right focus and concentrate on the most important issues. It s part of growing up as a professional green NGO. So finishing and then periodically updating or top 10, 12 or 15 most important demands will probably feel like doing a long neglected homework not always pleasant but inevitable. 3 There should be more focus on sectoral strategies We are not spending our time in a post-graduate seminar where we can tackle one problem in a nice theoretical ceteris-paribus -world independently from other problems even if they are related. We also need to realize that for most environmental problems, the arena where they take place and find their solutions usually is neither at the macro level regarding the entire economy nor only at the micro level so popular in pure economic theory. I think we must give much more attention to what I call the meso level. In the real world, most environmental problems are taking place in large sectors, in other words on the meso level. You want examples? Take energy energy issues do not play a role where energy costs are only a small percentage. But they are paramount for energy producers and big energy consumers. Take traffic. Take issues of food and agriculture. Take banking. All these groups of industries are what I call mesosectors. Each of the big mesosectors has a different bundle of environmental worries. And for each of the big mesosectors, politics usually comes up with different bundles of instruments. These bundles do not obey textbook wisdom but are usually the result of intensive political fighting. My message here is: When you want to be part of such debates, you will not be successful by saying, I am only the experts for MBI-tools. I am not interested in regulatory instruments. Or perhaps even more narrow: I am only the expert for ecotaxes, but I know nothing about emissions trading, and by the way, I also don t like it because I prefer taxing to trading. You can find all that in my well-known paper from I don t think with such attitudes you ll get very far in the future. The more successful we are, together with other pro-environment players, the more complex will be the resulting edifices of environmental policy mixes in different mesosectors.

9 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Page 9 4 Let s not forget social fairness Traditional social policy and issues of justice and welfare can certainly not be our primary concern. It s complicated enough to try and establish your competence for coherent strategies in environmental policy. But there are some intellectual and political interdependencies between people with a concern for social fairness and justice and those who fight for more environmental responsibility. Let me only mention the three strongest links between the two arenas. 1. Within a strong capitalist system (perhaps even in any economic system!) both nature and labour need particular protection. They are always in danger of getting overrun by the dynamic steamroller these systems often are. Economic elites will always have strong influence to bend things in their favour, in every system. 2. In practical life, when I look for natural political allies, I find no simple scheme, because unions and employer often form aggressive alliances for industrial growth. But still, usually people with social sensitivity are more open for environmental concerns, and vice versa. Not at least because in the end, environmental external costs are only a part of total social external costs and all require internalisation. 3. Finally, when you look at the history of social reform in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, both the arguments from the protagonists as from the antagonists are extremely similar to the pros and cons in today s environmental policy debates. We can profit from studying them. In other words, we need a socially advanced state and society with a strong social movement to protect the working population and the pour, and we need an environmentally advanced state with a strong environmental movement to protect nature and resources, also in the interest of our children and grandchildren. And we have some nice success stories of combining both objectives in the case of Green Budget Germany. In 2010, when the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was looking for additional revenues, GBG developed several EFR-proposals which explicitly took social concerns into account, aiming at simultaneously progressive and environmental fiscal measures. Only weeks later, the German government approved a tax on nuclear fuel and on air tickets a great success! 5 High-ranking support for our evolution in Germany As many of you know, Green Budget Germany s intellectual and programmatic evolution went in three phases. 1. Advocacy of environmental tax reform, from 1994 until about Advocacy of all market-based instruments, including emissions trading and the abolition of environmentally harmful subsidies (all under Environmental Fiscal Reform). 3. From 2008 on, we embarked on a new and wider paradigm. We became advocates of changing the social system, from a social market system to a three pillar combination, namely liberal market economy plus social welfare state plus ecological sustainability. GREEN BUDGET EUROPE (GBE)

10 Page 10 Görres: Stronger structures, bolder stragegies, greener Europe Two weeks ago, we organized a three days event, combining two topical workshops, one on energy and one on traffic, a celebration ceremony to honour the work of two decades, an Adam-Smith-Award ceremony where we honoured Adam Smith and the former Federal President, Horst Köhler, who gave us a wonderful acceptance speech. There was also a session of our German advisory board. So over the course of several sessions and two days, there were one former head of state, four federal ministers, four Länder ministers, and one federal State Secretary, or deputy minister. On the third day we had our AGM. Out of the nine politicians I mentioned, three were active. Perhaps the wisdom or courage to support strong ecotax and other MBI measures gets stronger with growing age or retirement of politicians. Nevertheless, we had great contributions, for instance from Germany s MoE, Barbara Hendricks, from former MoF Hans Eichel, or from former German MoE and former UNEP executive director, Prof Klaus Töpfer. Klaus Töpfer said: To him the most concrete implementation of sustainable development is an ecological-social market economy that term Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft is often used in German, as it is also major part of our name in German. But the greatest text was presented by Horst Köhler himself. As a member of our conservative party, the Christian Democrats, a former president of the German Nationals Savings and Loan Association, and also an Ex-IMF Director, no one can put him down as a romantic green idealist and dreamer: Even when still President he argued for higher prices of motor fuels. Köhler explicitly drew a line from our principle, that prices have to tell the truth in three dimensions, economically, socially, environmentally to the growth debate, to a development model for the Third World, and too our vision (since 2008) of an eco-social system. Köhler as yet was the highest-ranking politician in Germany to pronounce such a system as the next step in the necessary evolution of our society to safeguard sustainability. If he were president of Apple, he probably would have said the next best thing. When I look at the European 2020 strategy, I find there the three elements of intelligent growth plus inclusive growth plus sustainable growth. I cannot recognize a huge difference between these 2020 goals and the vision of an ecosocial market order. Unfortunately, the difference becomes much, much bigger when I look at the actual present political priorities of the EU or the dramatic decay of the ETS. Like many others, I am disappointed about the downgrading of the targets. Unless probably the European public, we know that a cut from 30 to 27% means much more than reducing our ambition by only 10 percent. Against these and similar disappointments, I find some consolation when I reread the speech from Federal President Horst Köhler. A strong, predictable, effective, global CO2 price is absolutely necessary to finally create the right price signals in the market that polluting the atmosphere does not pay! A global CO2 price would not kill profits, as feared by some, but would be an economic aphrodisiac, increasing the incentive even the desire to innovate.