Part II
Hungary
Energia Klub - Energy Club
Budapest, 19 December 1995
- Móricz Zs. Krt. 15 I/1
- H 1117 Budapest
- Hungary
- Phone: 36 1 188 6688
- E-mail: ada@geg.zpok.hu
The person and her function in the NGO
- Mrs. Ada Ámon - since 1993 the secretary of the Energy
Club and the president for 1996.
The NGO itself
The Energy Club was established in 1989/1990. The main reason
for establishment was to follow and influence the energy policy
debate in Hungary. The Energy Club was founded by NGOs, which
gave the mandate to the Energy Club to organize all activities
connected with the energy police of the Hungarian government.
Structure
Until now the Energy Club was a sub-organization of the ELTE nature
conservation club, but after January 1996, the Energy Club will
be a separate NGO with its own president, secretary and treasurer.
The organization has its head office in Budapest and is planning
to have supporting member groups throughout the country in the
future.
Objective(s) / Goal(s)
The main goal of the Energy Club is following and influencing
the energy policy in Hungary. Besides this they are well known
as the Hungarian anti nuclear energy voice.
Main areas of activity of the Danube Circle
Priority activities of the Energy Club are the collection and
the dissemination of information about Hungary's energy policy.
To inform and educate the people about energy policy and to
organize protest actions and political activities like lobbying,
especially against the use of nuclear energy. A supporting role
is taken for nature protection actions and the development and
design of environmental technology. Practicing environmental monitoring
is not in the scope of activities in the Energy Club.
Resources
- Human
- The staff of the Energy Club consists of three full-time salaried
people. Included are two volunteers who receive a small compensation.
The organization receives advice from some Western NGOs, who also
fund the overhead expenses of the Club. In the future, the Energy
Club plans to get supporting members, other NGOs throughout the
country, presently, they don't work with a membership system.
- Money
- Since the Energy Club depends on grants from several different
organizations, there is no average annual budget. The biggest
part of the budget for 1995, was from a big project with the Dutch
Novem: fl. 200,000, about 125,000 USD. Additionally, the Energy
Club receives some money from the Hungarian and the Dutch government,
while most of the overhead expenses are paid by the International
Institute of Energy Conservation (IIEC) in London. For certain
projects, funds of funding organizations were used as well.
- Expertise
- Spoken languages in the office are Hungarian, English and a little
German. The expertise on environmental issues, organizational
and strategical level is considered high. Of course, the energy
topic is the best known environmental issue.
- Access to information
- Available tools are phone, fax and computer(s) with e-mail. When
necessary the Energy Club can easily contact certain people from
Parliament or the media. Still, it is difficult to get the correct
information from policy makers, because often when a topic has
high priority for the government, as for example, the privatization
of the Hungarian energy sector, they will try to keep everything
secret, even by giving false information.
External Relations and intensity of the contact
The external relations of the Energy Club are based on cooperation
or conflict. Their relationship with the Ministry of the Environment
is dependent on the subject. In general, the intensity of the
contact is low because the Ministry of the Environment has such
an unimportant position in the government that it is of little
import to have a lot of contact with them for attaining the Club's
goals. The contact with environmentally sound business is cooperative,
but only with a low intensity. With other NGOs there is occasionally
good cooperation, but there is also some conflict. For the most
part, this depends on the scale which other NGOs are working on.
The contacts with local operating NGOs is in most of the cases
cooperative, but for some national oriented NGOs conflicts and/or
competition is felt, which is the case of the Clean Air Action
Group, since they are not dealing with smaller regional NGOs on
an equal level and this is unacceptable for the Energy Club. Good
cooperation with Western NGOs, like Greenpeace, WISE and Milieukontakt
Oost-Europa on a higher intensity has been mentioned. East-East
cooperation is frequently of a medium intensity. Currently,
East-East cooperation is more project based.
East-East Cooperation
The Energy Club was and to some extent is still the coordinator
of the energy group, Greenway Network. This is a network of CEE
environmental NGOs which started in 1985-1986. Greenway Network
is presently dying a slow death and is best used for its contacts.
The Energy Club has East-East cooperative projects with Greenpeace-Slovakia
on the Mochovce nuclear power plant, with Hnuti Duha (Czech Republic)
and with a group of NGOs within the Chernobyl Plus 10 campaign.
In the past the Energy Club organized international conferences
and created a cooperative strategy on the Mochovce project that
was the basis of fruitful East-East cooperation. The Energy Club
plans to invite CEE and former Soviet Union environmental NGOs
to come to Hungary to learn from its experience, especially of
lobbying. This experience sharing project can help other groups
to avoid the mistakes Energy Club made in the past.
Advantages / Motivation
When we make contacts with other groups that deal with the same
topic, it's more informative and beneficial - to both organizations.
Sometimes the Energy Club has pertinent information, sometimes
the Slovakian partners in the Mochovce project have useful information.
When we share the information our position becomes stronger -
we have more clout with the media and there's a better chance
they will report events accurately. Information sharing in this
way makes you more effective, especially in transboundary and
border problems. It is a fact that an organization can get more
grants when they cooperate with other groups, but this is not
always an advantage, since bigger projects often have more responsibility
associated with them and easily become slowed down by details
thus making the group ineffective. Fundraising with a NGO of
another country is usually easier, since donors, from both the
West and the East, like to have bigger projects for funding.
Finally when NGOs share their experiences they can avoid making
the same 'old' mistakes, and learn from each other.
Problems / Obstacles
If a NGO shares no common topics or goals with other NGOs, it
is very difficult to cooperate if there's no mutual direction
to work towards. East-East cooperation takes time, people working
in NGOs are already overloaded with work, so because of other
duties, it is hard to keep in touch with contacts on a regular
basis. Another problem is the lack of a common language, many
people don't speak English in CEE NGOs. And every leaflet the
Energy Club publishes has to be translated. This costs time and
extra money, which may be a problem. In general, the lack of money
is not really a problem, since a group can get money for everything,
and for East-East cooperation, if they really want to. Problems
arise when people of foreign NGOs are not really motivated, if
they are only "paper" environmentalists. It has happened
in the past, that people have come for a holiday in Budapest instead
of exchanging information and their experiences with the Energy
Club, who was paying their stay here. Cultural problems are acute
when exchange involves the countries of the former Soviet Union.
People there are more passive in political activities and it is
hard to convince them that they can really do something themselves.
There are political problems in Slovakia, the citizens there
are frightened to protest against nuclear energy because of the
Meciar government.
Historical-cultural problems between Hungary and Romania makes
it is difficult for Hungarians to trust Romanian people. Consequently,
cooperation between the Hungarian and Romanian NGOs is uneasy.
The Energy Club prefers to keep some distance, even in good relationships,
cooperation between NGOs can sometimes be a problem, partly
because of the different economical interests of the two countries
in the energy field.
Surplus Value / Results of East-East cooperation
The most important benefit of East-East cooperation is the mutual
benefit NGOs receive in reaching their common goals, the increased
name recognition for the Energy Club. And personally, learning
to speak English better and building friendships with people
from other countries and cultures.
Necessary features of a NGO for East-East cooperation
NGOs need to have a real topic and goal on which they can work
together. The strategy of an organization has to be clear and
the work on national level should be arranged properly, before
looking for international cooperation. Furthermore they need to
know each other, or have the opportunities to meet, for example,
conferences on a specific topic. Then a certain capacity is needed,
from personal point of view (speaking English and Russian) and
from point of view of available communication means (phone, fax,
e-mail).
Possible reasons for others not to start East-East cooperation
Most of the Hungarian NGOs don't have English speakers in their
group, and even if they do, they expect East-East cooperation
to be to time consuming. Moreover they expect that there are more
opportunities from working with the West, so NGOs spend more
time in establishing East-West cooperation. Personal preference
often plays a role, since it is nicer to visit Amsterdam than
to go to Kiev to meet your partner(s). Of course the topic of
the NGO is important as well, since a local NGO doesn't need to
cooperate internationally to reach their goal. A cultural reason
for not cooperating with Eastern NGOs is the expectation that
nothing will come out it, since CEE NGOs have no prior experience
of democratic discussions and agreeing on common solutions.
Future of East-East cooperative behavior of the NGO
The Energy Club will continue working on East-East cooperation,
because of the growing importance of the international Chernobyl
campaign. The planned experience exchange project on 'How to lobby'
will be both a national and an East-East cooperation project.
REC and East-East cooperation
Ada Ámon just finished the final report for an Earmarked
Grant, for which she was the project leader. The REC and the
RECs procedures are well known. A new application for the Chernobyl
campaign can be expected in the near future. In the field of East-East
cooperation the REC should help establish the contacts among
NGOs working on the same topic. But at the same time, the REC
should not set aside money just for East-East cooperation, the
initiative should come from the groups themselves. The informative
function of the REC can be very important for establishing contacts
with like NGOs and it's our opinion that the REC should further
develop this function, and develop their capacity as an office
monitoring the environmental movement. They should know exactly
what's going on in the environmental movement in CEE.
REC * PUBLICATIONS * BEYOND BORDERS - SIDE REPORT * HUNGARY
