European Environmental Plan Lacks Targets, Timetables

Environmental News Service European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom BRUSSELS, Belgium - Environment ministers from across Western Europe today launched a concerted attack on the lack of clear policy targets and timetables for action in the European Commission's new proposal for a Sixth Environmental Action Programme (6EAP). Environmentalists and other stakeholders have already made similar criticisms. The addition of such strong ministerial concerns marks a serious blow to European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom's approach to the 6EAP. The environmental action program provides the environmental component of the European Union's upcoming strategy for sustainable development. The plan calls for the active involvement and accountability of all sections of society in the search for innovative, workable and sustainable solutions to Europe's environmental problems. It identifies four priority areas: climate change; nature and biodiversity; environment and health; and natural resources and waste. In a televised debate held during the quarterly Environment Council meeting in Brussels today, Danish Environment Minister Svend Auken led the attack on the plan. "I'm extremely disappointed," he said. "We wanted something concrete; unfortunately we haven't been given it." Some proposed actions were "banal and commonplace," he added. German junior minister Rainer Baake called the plan a "bitter disappointment - too vague and too nebulous." France's Dominique Voynet said it "fell short" of ministers' intentions. Virtually all other ministers called for addition of more concrete objectives, though voicing their criticisms in milder language. After listening to ministers' objections, Wallstrom fought back, arguing that the document should contain only general objectives easily understood by the public. Danish Environment Minister Svend Auken "I'm absolutely not against targets and deadlines," she said, but these should be elaborated in thematic strategies to be developed later. An alternative program circulated at the meeting by Auken contained only one new quantitative target and one new deadline, she said. Proposing a list of future laws in the program would have been "more of the same," risking alienation of the European public and straying too far into policy domains of other ministers, Wallstrom argued. "We can't take over the work of other councils - it shouldn't be a sectoral thing, but focus on the issues," she said, building on a theme she also stressed in a February speech on the 6EAP. Wallstrom also rejected Dutch environment minister Jan Pronk's suggestion that the draft be reviewed by the European Environment Agency to assess whether the measures proposed were enough to reach its objectives. "The agency does follow-up," she said. "It's not a task of theirs to do criticism. Ministers should be in charge of this debate." Today's debate followed talks on the Sixth Environmental Action Programme yesterday between European Union ministers and their counterparts from the 15 candidate countries that are poised to join the European Union. According to council president, Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson, the European Union's candidate new members stressed a need for greater emphasis on transport related environment problems in the program. A key figure in the European Parliament as well as representatives of three European Union advisory bodies today added their voices to the growing chorus of disapproval of the 6EAP. Reporting on a public hearing held yesterday, the European Economic and Social Committee (ESC) said today that rapporteurs on the program from the ESC, its sister organization the Committee of the Regions, as well as the European Parliament had been "united" in calling for more concrete targets in the 6EAP. "In this way, they rejected the Commission's claim that it could not seriously propose a large number of targets because the necessary scientific data were not currently available," the Economic and Social Committee said in a statement. The Economic and Social Committee and Committee of the Regions have no formal say in the European Union legislative process. But the European Parliament will have co-decision powers over the 6EAP, and rapporteur Riitta Myller's strong stand therefore carries significant political weight. In addition to more and clearer targets, Myller said yesterday, "targets ... should not be confined to the medium term, up to 2010, but should also relate to the longer term." In another blow to Wallstrom's vision for the 6EAP, the European Union's Consultative Forum on Environment and Sustainable Development today went public with its own criticisms, also centered on the program's lack of clear targets and timetables. The 6EAP "contains general objectives, stated in a general form," the consultative forum complains. The Commission may have chosen this route deliberately to avoid the lengthy debate over details that hampered agreement on the previous environmental action program, but the result may be a loss of clarity and direction and also delays in implementation until the general objectives can be made more specific. Linked to the 6EAP were two other points of discussion at the Council - the integration of environmental aspects into other sectors and the strategy for sustainable development. Ministers discussed these issues in preparation for the Goteborg Summit, where a sustainable development strategy should be adopted, which is expected to put economic, environmental and social development at the top of the European Union's agenda. The 6EAP and the sectoral integration strategies form the environmental dimension of the sustainable development paper. The Council is due to adopt conclusions on the European Union's preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10) to take place in July 2002. Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk

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