HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group have signed up to the Project Merlin agreement, while Santander has agreed to the lending parts of the deal. This was in addition to the government increasing its levy on banks to £2.5bn in 2011 - raising an extra £800m. The Bank of England will monitor whether loans targets are being met. Under the agreement banks will lend about £190bn to businesses during 2011 - including £76bn to small firms - curb bonuses and reveal some salary details of their top earners. Project Merlin was announced on 9 February 2011 by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. This tax was temporary and lasted only for one year, but some, including Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party called upon the coalition government to extend this tax as a response to predictions that UK banks would pay out high levels of bonuses in 2011. This tax was equivalent to a 33.3% income tax. In the 2009 Pre-Budget Report, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling announced a temporary tax on bankers' bonuses, which required banks to pay 50% of all bonuses above £25,000 as a tax. The government had been concerned about low levels of bank lending during the recession that followed the banking crisis and had also been critical of high levels of pay and bonuses in the financial sector. The Northern Rock bank had already been nationalised following its collapse in 2007, the government subsequently part-nationalised Bradford and Bingley, Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland. In October 2008, the Labour Government of the UK introduced a bank rescue package as a response to the Financial crisis of 2007-2010. "Restoration thus also contributes to improving the residential environment and creates local recreation areas," says Sebastian Birk.George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who announced Project Merlin. One focus is on the creation and sustainable use of flowering meadows on the Emscher dikes. After the former dirty watercourse has already been cleaned and redesigned in a near-natural way at great expense, MERLIN is now contributing to the further upgrading of the watercourse environment. In Germany, the restoration of the Emscher is one of the supported projects. The effects of the measures will be accounted economically and ecologically.
"One focus is on cooperation with industries that can benefit from restoration, for example agriculture, drinking water production and insurance companies," explains Daniel Hering. These major projects will be expanded and upscaled with EU funding and developed into European-wide models. He coordinates MERLIN with Professor Hering.ġ0 million of the EU funding will go to 17 areas from Finland to Israel, where streams, rivers as well as bogs and wetlands are currently being restored to a near-natural state. Sebastian Birk of the UDE Aquatic Ecology Working Group.
"Many social groups benefit from restoration, and it requires the contribution of many actors," says Dr. MERLIN involves 44 partners from across Europe, including universities, research institutes, nature conservation organizations, Oppla, and stakeholders from business, government, and municipalities. The project will be project coordinated by the UDE and the European Union has provided 21 million Euros on funding which will last until 2025. A new project, MERLIN (Mainstreaming Ecological Restoration of freshwater-related ecosystems in a Landscape context: INnovation, upscaling and transformation) seeks new, widely applicable solutions for restoring the functions of freshwater ecosystems, for example to improve flood retention and store carbon dioxide.
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