EU Fast Start Finance Update

4 June 2010

At their side event yesterday, the EU presented a preliminary report on meeting its Copenhagen fast start finance pledge.  The European Commission and seven Member States announced, in response to a question, the following definitions of how their pledge is 'new and additional': * European Commission:  Money that was part of the EU budget margin, so not originally programmed 2010-2012. * Finland:  A net increase in funding for climate change projects, part of increasing ODA appropriations. * UK:  Part of a rising ODA budget. * Germany:  Money that comes from new and innovative sources (such as EU ETS auction revenues) and money that is additional to a 2009 baseline. * France:  Ongoing climate change activities are not counted as fast start, only new activities are counted. * Sweden:  From the budget over and above 0.7% GNI provided as ODA. * Netherlands:  0.1% above 0.7% GNI provided as ODA. * Spain:  'Fresh' money. ECO wasn't satisfied with the answers, since climate finance should be new and additional to the targets developed countries have set to increase ODA to at least 0.7% GNI, so that the development gains of recent years are not reversed.  Al the same, this is a welcome first step towards the transparency civil society and delegates need to hold them to account for their promises. ECO calls on the other 20 EU Member States as well as all other developed country Parties to come clean about the baselines for additionality that they are using. Only then can the debate about defining a fair common baseline for additionality really begin. Nobody would trust pledged cuts in emissions without a standard baseline. It's time for these Parties to recognise that the same is true of finance commitments.