An EU budget to make energy citizens a reality

Where should the money go? Read Energy Cities and CEE Bankwatch network’s proposal on the EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) post 2020.

In a joint position paper published today, we sketch a creative policy vision for how the next MFF could best unlock innovative financing and address specific barriers faced by energy citizens and community power projects wishing to invest in their own small scale RES projects. This paper is in line with the European People’s Budget campaign (An EU budget for citizens), which Energy Cities supports.

The solutions advocated in this paper involve two pillars:

• The first is the creation of an Energy Citizens Facility, or targeted financing programme involving the pooling of a set aside across several existing funds within the MFF, and creating an EU enabling framework to unlock innovative financing, in a geographically equitable way across the Union.
• The second pillar involves crafting both new ex-ante conditionalities and new incentive structures within the MFF, to encourage the identification and removal of regulatory, and administrative barriers hindering small scale RES deployment at national level.

It is illustrated by case studies from Central and Eastern Europe showing the need for reform of post-2020 cohesion policy to help enable scale up and encourage removal of national barriers.

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