GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | KOMMUNIKATION GLOBAL - 01 | 2009

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WINDOW ON EUROPE Just When Hope Was at Hand By Vesna Peric Zimonjic from Belgrade The Balkans region, crippled by the wars of the 1990s and then pushed through painful transition to a market economy, has been hit hard by the global economic crisis just when everyone believed the time had come for promising new development. "For the first ten months of 2008, we have seen one of the best economic years for more than a decade," Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said at a press conference in Belgrade Dec. 17. "However, the effects of the worst global crisis seem about to hit us as hard. This is a kind of crisis none of us has seen in our lives." Thousands have been laid off across Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. Albania and Montenegro too have run into economic stagnation over the past couple of months. The hardest hit are the metal processing and textile industries, together with tourism and services. The last two have been the big boost for economic growth, particularly in Croatia and Montenegro. "The region cannot avoid the global crisis," Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on a recent visit to Belgrade. He now heads an expert body for monitoring the financial crisis, set up by the United Nations General Assembly in September. "Some countries will be hit directly on the trade level, others because of the fall of the price of raw materials," he said. "This crisis began at the centre, in the U.S., but the periphery will be hit the most, because exports and direct foreign investments will suffer. The region depends on Europe, which will suffer even greater consequences than the U.S." "We are already witnessing that," analyst Goran Nikolic told IPS. "Serbia relies on exports; food and raw materials such as copper and iron make 40 percent of exports. The price of copper dropped by half in the past two months." Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic |Wikipedia The international conglomerate Rio Tinto, potential investors in the Serbia copper industry, announced in November that it will lay off more than 13,000 people worldwide. "So, Serbia cannot expect much from there," Nikolic said. Similarly with plans to sell Russia oil enterprises in Serbia worth some 400 million euros. With Russia also in recession, prospects for that sale are now small. Slowdown all around Serbia's deal with the Italian company Fiat to revive the car industry in the central town Kragujevac is also in doubt, with Fiat struggling to survive at home. "If Serbia reaches 3 percent growth in 2009, that will be a success," analyst Stojan Stamenkovic told IPS. "That is a major blow, as growth was around 7.5 percent for 2008, which is likely the figure for the region." Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia saw 6 percent growth in the first ten months of the year, Macedonia 5.2 percent and Montenegro 7 percent. All that is now expected to slow to less than half. "It would be a miracle if Croatia reaches 2 percent growth next year," analyst Zeljko Lovrincevic from the Economy Institute of Zagreb told local media. "There will be a dramatic fall of investment into tourism, construction and the ship building industry." The three are the big engines of the Croatian economy. "The slowdown in economic activity will last till the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011," he added. Fears are mounting that the high unemployment rate could go up. Bosnia's official unemployment rate stands at 30 percent, but is more likely to be around 45 percent. In Croatia it is 12.6 percent, and in Macedonia 34.9 percent. Montenegro puts it at 11 percent, and Serbia 20 percent. Little is being said about the former southern Serbian province Kosovo, which declared independence in February. So far, this least developed area of the Balkans has received little foreign investment. But small private business that saw some momentum over the past years are now recording decline, going by figures at the business registration office of the Ministry of Trade and Industry. "Of the 90,000 businesses registered, around 50 percent can be considered inactive," Mehdi Pllashniku, head of the business registration office told local media. According to Safet Gerxhaliu from the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce, the high number of inactive businesses is worrying. "This clearly illustrates that business in Kosovo is in crisis," he told local media. In neighbouring Albania, the situation seems to be much as in other areas of the Balkans. Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said at a business roundtable recently that the economy would be affected by the global downturn. "Albania is not directly affected by the crisis, but will see a slowdown in emigrant remittances, which account for almost a billion euros (1.47 billion dollars) every year," Berisha said. More than 700,000 Albanians are working abroad, supporting more than two million people in their country. "For us there is little more to do than to continue our work that improves the environment for investments, despite what happens in the international markets," Berisha said. Serbian President Boris Tadic told reporters that Serbian authorities will "do whatever is necessary to maintain jobs for the employed." Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader called for a "tightening of belts" to survive the crisis. But he brushed off predictions that 150,000 people might be left jobless in near future. IPS | GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES � 14 KOMMUNIKATION GLOBAL | JANUAR 2009
WINDOW ON EUROPE Mega Solar Power Plant Begins to Operate in Portugal The most ambitious and innovative solar power project in the world kicked off Dec. 29 in this white-walled village in the southern Portuguese municipality of Moura, one of the most impoverished areas in the European Union. The Acciona Energy S.A. company has put into service the Amareleja photovoltaic power plant, located 150 km south of Lisbon, which is capable of producing enough energy to supply 30,000 households in the south-central region of Alentejo. Almost simultaneously, the mayor of Moura, José María Prazeres Pós-de- Mina, was selected as one of the ten finalists for the prestigious 2008 People of the Year award granted by One- World, a non-governmental news network that is one of the most highlyrespected international organisations devoted to raising environmental awareness and promoting change. The only requirement for nomination was that the candidates embody the values of OneWorld, which include human rights for all, fair distribution of the world's natural and economic resources, simple and sustainable ways of life, the right of every individual to inform and be informed, participation and transparency in decision-making, and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Pós-de-Mina, who was born 50 years ago in Pías, another village in the municipality of Moura, keeps a low profile, but has nevertheless become famous throughout Europe as "the mayor of the future" for his pioneering work in renewable energy. The grandson, son and nephew of prominent anti-fascist activists who were persecuted and incarcerated by Portugal’s 1926-1974 dictatorship, Pósde-Mina became politically active at an early age when he joined the Union of Communist Students, an organisation that played a major role in the opposition to the dictatorial regime. But his militant background did not prevent Pós-de-Mina from becoming a skilful businessman, and after earning a BA in business administration he took on the challenge of founding the Amper Solar power company, planting the seed for what is now the world’s largest solar energy plant. Located in the Baldio da Ferraría, a 250-hectare sun-scorched plain, the plant was built at a cost of 410 million dollars in the sunniest area of Portugal, the European country with the By Mario de Queiroz in Amareleja greatest number of sunlight hours per year. The reputation of this unassuming mayor of a small municipality of Portugal has transcended national borders, as he has come to be known as the architect of the most ambitious renewable energy project in the world. "It all happened without my even realising it," Pós-de-Mina confessed modestly when he learned that OneWorld described him as "the mayor of the future." The Amareleja Power Plant project involves photovoltaic (PV) technology that uses semiconductors to convert the sun’s rays into electric power. Within a year, the plant will have an installed capacity of 46 megawatts (MW). It is expected to be operating at full capacity by the year 2010, when it will produce 64 MW using 2,520 solar trackers supporting 262 modules with 268,000 PV panels producing 93 gigawatts/hour per year, generating sufficient electricity to power 30,000 homes. The plant’s solar power production will contribute enormously to helping Portugal meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments, drastically cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 152,000 tons a year. "This project is important for Moura and for Alentejo, but it is also important because of its contribution to the development of Portugal and its significance in Europe due to its size, as it will convert sunlight into 64 million watts," making it 12 times bigger than the largest solar power plant that exists today in the EU, which is located in Germany and produces five million watts, Pós-de-Mina told IPS in a recent interview. At the same time, the municipality of Moura launched the Sunflower project, which involves a network of eight municipalities from eight different countries in Europe (Bulgaria, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) that seek to transform their towns into what the EU calls "Zero Carbon Communities" under its Intelligent Energy - Europe (IEE) programme for the promotion of alternative energy sources. Sunflower’s goal is to "convert these EU communities into environments free of CO2 emissions by turning them into areas where only renewable energies are used," Pós-de-Mina added. The idea is to "conduct campaigns to raise awareness on the use of renewable energies and the benefits for the population," he said. Pós-de-Mina’s work in Amareleja and the Sunflower project earned him the nomination for the OneWorld award. Both efforts began as a way of finding solutions to the area’s growing economic problems, but eventually turned into pioneer initiatives that serve as encouraging examples for the entire world. For this pragmatic communist mayor and businessman, harnessing Alentejo’s abundant sunlight seemed like "the most obvious way" to develop alternative renewable energy sources that would in turn create jobs in a region where unemployment -- at 15 percent - - is twice the national average. In 2007, the municipality of Moura sold the 88 percent stake it held in Amper Solar -- owner of the plant installation rights -- to the Spanish company Acciona, which has since become the sole shareholder in the solar plant, after the minority shareholders decided to follow the municipality’s example. Portugal’s solar, wind, and wave energy projects have received unconditional backing from the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which seeks to speed up the continent’s transition to a low-CO2 economy. Until April 2004, Portugal’s solar and wind power generation was very low, in spite of the fact that the country is extremely sunny and windy. The wind energy generated in Portugal prior to 2007 was in fact practically marginal. At present, this country of 92,000 square kilometres and 10.6 million inhabitants is one of the top wind power generators in the EU. From 2004 to 2006, several wind power parks were built in Portugal, producing a total of 500 MW and putting this country in third place in the EU, after Germany (357,000 sq km and 82 million inhabitants), which produces 1,808 MW, and Spain (504,000 sq km and 46 million inhabitants), with a production of 1,764 MW, and ahead of Italy (301,000 sq km and 59 million inhabitants), which has a total production of 452 MW. The change has been so drastic that Portugal went from being at the bottom of the EU’s renewable energy ranking to becoming one of the continent’s leading generators. IPS | GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES � GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | JANUARY 2009 15
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