News from the Ground

Budapest Water Summit offers mirage of water for all

It had been billed as a summit to push for universal access to water, but attending the Budapest Water Summit held last week felt like grasping at a mirage of water in a desert. The slogans and appearance were attractive, but held no prospect of delivering the human right to water for all.

Behind the mirage of the Budapest Water Summit, held in Hungary from 8-11 October 2013, lay the same corporate players and market-driven processes that continue to deny access to the world’s most critical resource to millions of people.

The mirage was evident firstly in the process. The conference constantly emphasised its participatory nature, encouraging different stakeholders to produce recommendations for the 'Budapest Water Summit statement' that could also act as a basis for governments’ commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (due to replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2016). But this façade of consultation merely hid the real drivers of discussions and debates.

Read more on the website of the TransNational Institute

Greek government owes, Greek government "regulates" !

EYDAP

Desiring to sell EYDAP cheaply the Government of Greece is trying to write off more than € 700 m of debts to the company. The Board of the Company (mostly controlled by the Government) will bring the issue in a Shareholders’ Meeting (to be held sometime in October). This way the Company’s value will be lowered by the above sum, the value of its shares will diminish, and its prospective buyers will be able to acquire it for peanuts.

Does it “rain elsewhere” for the Greek Government?

With a general and unsubstantiated cliché that "privatization is an one-way for EYATH” transmitted by the private TV channels - who are the only ones - the Greek government welcomed the news of the retreat of the European Commission and the exclusion of water services from the new Concessions Directive.

After the strong stance of the German public opinion and despite of collusion of the political parties and of course in view of the elections, it seems that the Commission was forced to retreat in the end and to completely exclude water services from the Concessions Directive.

Proposal for a directive on radioactive substances in water intended for human consumption

The European Commission’s DG Energy initiated the drafting of a proposal for a directive laying down the requirements for the control of radioactive substances in water intended for human consumption. This proposal, based legally on the EURATOM Treaty (Articles 31 and 32), aims to integrate these requirements into specific legislation, in order to maintain uniformity, coherence and completeness of legislation on the protection against radiation at the EU level. In fact, these provisions supersede those related to the control of radioactive substances in water intended for human consumption of Directive 98/83/EC. It should be noted that currently Directive 98/83/EC does not require frequent monitoring on parameters for radioactivity.

The SOURCE platform is now online!

source4youth

The online version on the Source Platform is now available at www.source4youth.org

This initiative has grown a lot since its bases were laid in the World Water Alternative Forum at Marseille and after that, more concretely, in the Blue Pavilion at Rio +20. It was announced at the World Social Forum in Tunis, where many have agreed to contribute to the objectives: Inform, stimulate and support the mobilisation of youth on the social issues related to the right to water.

More Articles...