Bishop Hill thinks that the new EU budget is a funding bonanza for the Greens. I think it is just hype. My comment on the blog was:-

Page 6 of the Conclusions

Climate action objectives will represent at least 20% of EU spending in the period 2014-2020.

But looking at annex 1 on page 46 there is no separate category for climate. Of the EUR 960bn budget for 2014-2020

1. Smart and Inclusive Growth = 451 (47%)

2. Sustainable Growth: Natural Resources = 373 (39%)

The rest (Categories 3-6) = 136 (14%)

The EU no longer identifies agriculture as by far the biggest component. That would mean some obvious questions about why they spend so much on an increasingly minor component of EU output. Instead the spin doctors hide it in “growth” categories. The climate commitment is then broadly defined, to include subsidizing bio-fuels and paying farmers to grow trees instead of farming their land. The vast majority of the money will do nothing to “save the planet”. It is the environmentalists who should be crying foul here. Along with anybody who thinks claiming 86% of the budget is on “growth” is a highly misleading claim.

This is verified by two quotes courtesy of Joanne Nova verifies my opinions of earlier. First from WWF:-

International aid received a disproportionately large cut while investment in connecting Europe’s energy infrastructure, a move that would allow better pooling of renewable resources, was cut from €12bn to €5bn.

Second from European Environmental Bureau :-

EEB Secretary General Jeremy Wates said, “This is the worst of both worlds: a smaller budget that is explicitly dedicated to keep pumping money into Europe’s most wasteful and harmful policies and projects, in particular the CAP.”

The EU has adopted a re-branding of budgets. They know that the Common Agricultural Policy is unpopular and is anti-growth and anti-jobs. Historically it has encouraged massive spending and trashing of the traditional countryside to produce food that nobody wants. To get rid of the food mountains, CAP paid farmers not to produce. Now they will make the claim that this deadweight spending it pro-growth and pro-environment. It is just a re-branding exercise.