BUDAPEST - One year ago, the Belgian government purchased two million tonnes of CO₂ emission rights from Hungary. This €26 million investment is intended to help the country meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions by 7.5 per cent by 2012 compared to 1990 levels.
Under the terms of the agreement, Hungary had to invest the proceeds in the Green Investment Scheme (GIS), an investment instrument for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Belgium is one of the first countries to experiment with this mechanism. The results of this agreement will therefore be decisive for an evaluation during the summit in Copenhagen.
In this article, Griet De Cort, Thomas Ortegat and Bart van Bael examine whether the environment will benefit from this multimillion-dollar deal. They obtained a copy of the Belgian-Hungarian contract through the state regulation on public access to information. However, parts of the contract were missing, and no answers were forthcoming. This prompted our correspondents to conduct their own investigation. They travelled to Hungary to track down the missing millions, but it soon became clear that prying eyes are not tolerated in Budapest.
