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Sven Hegelund, the EBRD Board Director for Sweden, Iceland and Estonia |
On 1 July 2009, Sweden took over the EU presidency. Sven Hegelund, the EBRD Board Director for Sweden, Iceland and Estonia, speaks about the challenges of this presidency and maps the cooperation with the Bank in two areas of common interest – financial crisis and climate change.
What are the Swedish EU presidency's priorities?
The two overriding priorities of the Swedish EU presidency are responding to the economic crisis and combating climate change.
When it comes to the economic crisis, Sweden will build on the European Union’s crisis response so far. There is still a need to manage the immediate crisis, but focus must now partly shift towards sustaining long-term recovery. We need to restore functioning financial markets and confidence in them, including strengthening the supervisory system for the financial markets. Also, there is a need for starting to work on an exit strategy from the large-scale borrowing of governments to restore public finances after the crisis.
We expect the EBRD to continue to play a very important role in the response to the financial crisis, both within parts of the EU and equally important in the Union’s Eastern neighbourhood and beyond. Stabilising the financial systems of the countries of operation, where the EBRD is often the leading international financial institution (IFI), has broad implications for stabilising the international financial markets overall.
When it comes to climate change, the prime focus of the Swedish EU presidency is the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December 2009.
What is the Swedish experience in fighting climate change?
Sweden is among the countries that have clearly shown that economic growth is compatible with decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. Since 1990 our gross national product has grown by 44 per cent. At the same time our carbon dioxide emissions decreased by almost 9 per cent. This has been achieved through setting long-term goals and using a number of tools such as taxes and incentive programmes to reach these goals.
Sweden has also called on the European Union to take the lead in fighting climate change. What is on the agenda?
The EU has already agreed on a 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020, 20 per cent of the EU’s energy is to come from renewable sources and a target of a 20 per cent energy efficiency increase has also been set for 2020. Within an ambitious global agreement the EU should be prepared to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent instead of the already agreed 20 per cent. This upgrading presupposes ambitious reductions also by the rest of the world.
The Copenhagen meeting is seen as a landmark opportunity by all and must become a success if the climate change challenges are to be met. There seems to be a widespread consensus about this, which will hopefully create a window of opportunity for reaching an ambitious agreement. We are pleased to note the positive signals of the new US administration on the need to act in this field, and we feel the EU is in a good position to play a positive and active role. However, equally important is of course the need to get the major emerging economies on board. As the Swedish EBRD Director, I am pleased to note that the Bank has been innovative and has developed ways of operating in the field of energy efficiency which could be used in other regions as well.
What is the Swedish - EBRD cooperation on the issue of climate change?
The EBRD has a crucial role to play in this area. First because our region of operations is one of the most energy and carbon emission intensive in the world, secondly because the EBRD is one of the pioneers in developing effective measures for reducing carbon emissions and tackling energy inefficiencies, both through normal financial operations targeting energy efficiency and through, for instance, promoting carbon trading.
The Swedish Government is strongly supporting the EBRD's Sustainable Energy Initiative and has made available substantial financial resources for implementing projects within the initiative. Sweden has also taken the initiative to launch a special programme for supporting energy efficiency projects in the Eastern Partnership countries, initially focussing on Ukraine. The idea is to support normal IFI banking operations improving energy efficiency with grants for technical assistance as well as for co-financing investments from a donor grant fund. The initiative will be modelled on the very successful Northern Dimension Environment Partnership (NDEP) for supporting environmental projects in the Baltic Sea Area.
The aim of this initiative is to involve the European Commission and as many donor countries as possible, including non-EU countries, to raise sufficient funds to really make a difference in helping countries in the region become energy efficient. The aim is also, as is the case with NDEP, to pool and coordinate the resources of a number of IFIs, namely the EBRD, the EIB, the World Bank Group, the Nordic Investment Bank and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation. The EBRD has kindly accepted to act as the lead bank, administering the initiative. We hope to launch this initiative at a pledging conference in the fall and hope to have the initiative operational in 2010.
By Marjola Xhunga, Communications Adviser
Photos: EBRD
8 July 2009
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