Autumn and budget
It’s beginning to become autumn in Karlstad, Sweden. It gets dark much earlier in the evening. The Saturday night, it was a really nice sky with plenty of stars and the “Milky way” sparkled.

Today the new government presented the budget for 2007. The budget for the environmental politics is on an unchanged level compared with 2006, it says, I haven’t checked that. The climate issue is of strategic signification for both Sweden and the world it says in the press release. A control station is suggested in 2008 for the climate strategy decided by the parliament. Both the Baltic Sea and the North Sea are in question for national environmental strategies. Over 2 million euros per year in 2008 and 2009 are granted for this purpose. One good thing to see is that the government strengthens the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate with 870 000 euro a year in 2007 and 2008 and with 432 000 euro in 2009. The purpose of this is to ease the enforcement of REACH.

A Sustainable Commission is meant to look into the legislation and steering instruments and to give suggestions to simplify and make organisations more effective. And there are, of course more of measures in the budget. As usual in national budgets there are strategic plans and commissions introduced but it is more difficult to predict what the result will be in the local level.