Annexes to COM(2004)394 - Integrating environmental considerations into other policy areas- a stocktaking of the Cardiff process - Main contents
Please note
This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2004)394 - Integrating environmental considerations into other policy areas- a stocktaking of the Cardiff process. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2004)394  |
| date | June 1, 2004 |
* The EU Water Initiative should be taken forward by moving to action on the ground in concert with all major stakeholders, following the decision by Council in March 2004 on initial funding for the ACP-EU water facility. The EU Energy Initiative should also be taken forward, notably by ensuring adequate financing. The initiative should assist in identifying energy - environment links, to provide modern, environmentally sustainable, energy services to the general public, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
* The Action Plan for Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade, should be taken forward by the Commission, in particular by adopting a Regulation on the subject in 2004 with a view to implementing a voluntary licensing scheme for timber exports from partner countries. A Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of this scheme is scheduled to take place in 2004. Still on the theme of forests, the Commission will propose a negotiating mandate for the re-negotiation of the International Tropical Timber Agreement, which will take place in July 2004.
* The review of the Biodiversity Action Plan for Economic and Development Cooperation in 2004 offers opportunities to better address biodiversity issues in development cooperation.
* In the framework of the review of the integration strategy foreseen for 2004 and the evaluation of environment aid, the Union should address in priority the need for new financial means to facilitate the implementation of Multilateral Environmental Agreements and other key environmental policies in developing countries.
* The strategy for integration of environmental considerations into development policy sets a timetable and indicators. Key actions for 2004 include the training in environmental integration for headquarter and delegation staff working on development issues, setting up an environmental helpdesk, evaluating the budget line on environment in developing countries and tropical forests and drafting new programming guidelines for 2005-2006 and updating the manual on integration for development cooperation.
3.7. Fisheries
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Challenges and opportunities ahead for environmental integration
Building upon the Commission's Proposals under the Common Fisheries Policy and the Council agreement of December 2002 and December 2003, efforts should be pursued to meet the WSSD objective of securing sustainable exploitation of fish resources by 2015:
* All necessary steps need to be taken to implement the CFP reform, notably through reductions in fishing pressure, the setting up of the first Regional Advisory Councils in 2004, developing new fisheries partnership agreements and integrating environmental concerns into aquaculture.
* The number of species and areas affected by fishing pressure is increasing. The 2003 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) report notes that, of 113 fish stocks that ICES assessed in the Northeast Atlantic in 2001, only 18% were inside safe biological limits and that over fishing is a major reason for the decline in stocks. Steps are needed to further reduce fishing effort.
* In the longer term, the Union should bear in mind the effects of climate change on the size and distribution of stocks in setting policy and operational objectives.
3.8. Economic and financial affairs
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>TABLE POSITION>
Challenges and opportunities ahead for environmental integration
* Building upon the new Directive on energy products taxation, which entered into force in January 2004, further steps need to be taken to foster the use of flexible, market-based, instruments to promote environmental protection. To this end, the Commission will present in 2004 a Communication on the subject.
* The current Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, which are a major input to the preparation of the Commission Spring Report and involve establishing a dialogue with the Member States on economic policy, cover the period 2003-2005. While they include general environmental considerations since 2001, country-specific environmental recommendations should be considered for the BEPGs for 2005 onwards, where there is evidence of a problem that is specific to the country concerned and which poses a substantial economic challenge or has implications for economic policy
* Further action should be taken, using the OECD framework to be published at the end of 2004, to highlight environmentally harmful subsidies, and to consider their removal, albeit taking into account their social and economic aspects as set out in the Environmental Technologies Action Plan.
* The Commission should put forward proposals for more ambitious environmental targets for energy taxation within two years of the energy products tax directive's adoption, as set out in its communication COM (2001) 264) on the Sustainable Development Strategy.
3.9. Trade and foreign policy
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>TABLE POSITION>
Challenges and opportunities ahead for environmental integration
* The Union should take on board the challenge, recognised in the European Security Strategy adopted by the December 2003 European Council, that climate change could pose over the next decades through increasing competition for natural resources, notably water. This might create further turbulence and migratory movements in various regions.
* The European Neighbourhood Policy (Wider Europe) Initiative, under development following the adoption of the Commission Communication of March 2003, addresses environmental issues. As part of this, the reflection on establishing a New Neighbourhood Instrument offers an opportunity to take into consideration the particular environmental challenges of the countries concerned.
* The environmental dimension should be integrated in the planned Common European Economic Space (CEES), endorsed at the EU-Russia Summit in November 2003.
* The recently set-up European Green Diplomacy Initiative should be built upon to enhance operationally the EU's voice and influence on international environmental negotiations and processes. It should also enhance dialogue with key partners on environmental issues.
* The Commission and Member States should further promote a trade and environment agenda in WTO negotiations in the framework of the Doha Development Agenda and the environment dimension of regional and bilateral trade agreements should be strengthened, notably through improved Sustainability Impact Assessments and use of their results in negotiations.
* Implementation of the OECD Recommendation on Common Approaches on Environment and Officially Supported Export Credits, should be taken forward with Member States and additional action taken to enhance the contribution of export credits to sustainable development, for example for renewable energy.
4. The need to improve delivery on environmental integration
From the analysis of sectoral achievements above, it may be concluded that the Cardiff process has produced mixed results. On the positive side, it has helped bring about concrete improvements in some sectors - the Commission's initiatives on renewable energy and energy efficiency being an undeniable step forward on that score. The 2003 and 2004 CAP reform greatly contributed to progress towards Cardiff process objectives. The Cardiff process has also contributed to raising the profile of environmental integration, now regularly discussed at EU level.
However, environmental integration commitments are still largely to be translated into further concrete results for the environment. To date, the Cardiff process has failed to deliver fully on expectations. It suffers from several shortcomings:
* A general lack of consistency: quality and ambition vary widely from one sector to another. Not all Council formations have shown the same degree of commitment to the process. Some strategies have taken the form of a fully developed set of environmental commitments, with deadlines, milestones, and reporting and review mechanisms. Others are limited to declarations of intent through Council conclusions, more focused on how environmental policy should be pursued than on commitments for environmental integration in the concerned sectors. Ways of improving consistency should be explored.
* Political commitment could be strengthened: The Cardiff process seems to have been perceived by several Council formations as a pro forma exercise, imposed on them by the European Council, for which they did not feel ownership. The pace of progress seems also to have varied according to the degree of commitment to environmental integration of the successive Council Presidencies.
* Delivery, implementation and review mechanisms can be improved: Undoubtedly some perseverance is needed, as integration efforts require time to pay off - the sectors that first developed integration strategies have tended to achieve results, as illustrated by agriculture. However, provisions for implementation can help delivery. For example, the Development strategy adopted in 2001 goes into detail on measures needed for delivery on the ground, including human resource issues, awareness raising and training. However, many Council formations seem to have interpreted Cardiff as a one-off exercise. Yet integration is a dynamic process, which requires regular monitoring, reviewing and updating to be effective. But only a few strategies set out plans for regular reviews. For example, the Energy Strategy adopted in 1999 includes a commitment to review every two years.
* Clearer priorities and focus are needed: Many strategies have tended to be all-inclusive and failed to clearly identify priority areas where focussed actions could make a difference. However, the momentum of environmental integration appears to be boosted for sectors, for which the Union has set clear targets and milestones. For instance, the 1999 Energy Strategy and 2001 Development Strategy re-emphasise established targets for 2010 or 2015 (for action on climate change, renewable energy and combined heat and power and for reversing the trend in loss of environmental resources). The Development and Fisheries strategies also include a table of milestones setting out actions with deadlines for their completion. In addition, where competence lies with the Union, targets against which progress can be monitored and reviewed are often easier to achieve. In many other areas, objectives tend to be more ambiguous and the path towards integration less clear. It often requires compromises between different national interests that are difficult to reach and the sometimes equally difficult mobilisation of national efforts for their implementation.
* Adopting a strategic forward looking approach would help: So far, many of the most significant steps taken to advance environmental integration at EU level have responded to crisis situations, in the form of pressing threats to sustained economic activity (fisheries), repeated food scares (agriculture) or recurring ecological disasters (maritime transport), rather than resulted from the environmental integration strategies devised in the framework of the Cardiff process. More focus on the development and implementation of the strategic approach established by the Cardiff process would increase the cost-effectiveness of environmental integration. It is generally accepted that strategic approaches by planning ahead, allow better management of risks and can reduce both future damage costs and the costs of avoiding damage.
These shortcomings have led to calls for renewed action. In October 2002, the Environment Council called upon the European Council to "reinforce the Cardiff process [...] with the aim of achieving sustainable development, in particular by calling upon relevant Council formations to put into practice the decoupling of economic growth from resource use and environmental degradation under the co-ordination of the Council (General Affairs/External Relations) in accordance with the Seville conclusions, and to give an account of integration actions and achievements at the Spring European Council every two years starting from 2003 or 2004 as appropriate" [24].
[24] Environment Council conclusions on putting into practice the European Union sustainable development strategy and the environmental dimension of the Johannesburg commitments (Brussels, 17 October 2002).
The Brussels European Council of March 2003 reaffirmed the importance of the environmental integration mandate in the context of the EU's strive to move towards sustainable development, and called to this end for a strengthening of the Cardiff process, notably through the development of "sector-specific decoupling objectives". The specificities of each strategy's institutional and policy contexts should of course be taken into account in setting these objectives as well as in the future development of the Cardiff process.
The Spring European Council of March 2004 again emphasised the importance of environmental integration, stating: "Growth, to be sustainable, must be environmentally sound. Through better policy integration and more sustainable consumption and production patterns, growth must be decoupled from negative environmental impacts."
5. Way forward
As underscored by the Spring European Council in March 2003 [25] and in the Environment Policy Review 2003, environmental integration needs to be reinvigorated. This is supported by the assessment above. Given the persistence of significant negative environmental pressures and unsustainable trends, the Cardiff process must be pursued, in some cases with more vigour. However, successful integration of environmental concerns into other sectors will require further steps to support this process and promote integration, within the wider sustainable development context. In the following section a number of suggestions are made for increasing the effectiveness of the Cardiff process through complementary actions at the Community and national level to ensure that it feeds through into environmental improvements on the ground.
[25] See paragraph 57 of the Presidency Conclusions to the European Council (20-21 March 2003).
5.1. Revitalising the Cardiff process
i) The Cardiff process needs clear leadership. A clear policy signal should be given by the European Council on the need to pursue environmental integration with determination through the Cardiff process. The European Council should regularly be informed on the pace of progress in this area and therefore provided with the opportunity to recall its commitment to environmental integration, so as to give the political impulse needed to mobilise the different Council formations to that end.
ii) In line with the March 2003 European Council conclusions, the Commission will carry out an annual stocktaking of the Cardiff process to feed into the Environmental Policy Review and the Commission's Spring Report and to contribute to the Spring European Council discussion.
Approaches to promoting good practice and consistency between strategies in terms of monitoring, review and updating the content of strategies should also be explored. The Commission will develop a common framework and guidelines during 2005, identifying possible approaches and presenting options as how best to ensure the necessary coordination and oversight role.
iii) The sectoral councils should ensure that:
* Emphasis is put on strategy implementation and on delivering on the commitments already made.
* Strategic aims are translated into clear operational targets. More focussed objectives and milestones should be included in the strategies to establish a pathway to environmental integration for each sector. Monitoring will also benefit from a more systematic and focussed approach. For instance, as suggested by the United Kingdom in its contribution to the preparation of the Spring 2004 Council, the different council formations could be asked by the European Council to report every year on the measures taken to combat climate change.
* Strategy monitoring is put into practice: further efforts need to be made on the development and use of sector-specific decoupling objectives, milestones and integration indicators (building upon steps taken in the transport - TERM, agriculture - IRENA, and energy - ERM, fields), against which to measure progress towards sustainable development. [26]
[26] This was underlined in the Presidency Conclusions to the Spring European Council (20-21 March 2003), paragraph 57.
* Strategies include updating and review mechanisms to allow for adjustments to reflect progress and lessons learned and relevant policy developments to be taken into account in ongoing implementation.
More specifically:
* The General Affairs and External Relations Council whose strategy review was due in 2003 should be invited to proceed with the reviews in a timely manner. In the framework of the review of the Development strategy planned for 2004, to adjust the strategy's objective to the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation to contribute actively to its achievement. In addition, the review should address the need for new financial means to facilitate the implementation of Multilateral Agreements and other key environmental policies in developing countries.
* As underlined by the Environment Council (17 October 2002), environmental integration efforts need to be extended to other sectoral policies. Given their close interlinkages with environmental policy, the Council identified tourism, research, cohesion policy and education as priority candidates for further environmental integration efforts at EU level.
5.2. Complementing the Cardiff process
To ensure that the Cardiff process feeds through into real improvements in environmental quality and promotes sustainable development in the actions that it generates, it is clear that the institutional and top-down approach of this process needs to be complemented by more practical steps at both Community and national levels.
The aim of these complementary measures would be to mobilise other actors at Community level and in member states to support environmental integration, re-inforcing the effectiveness of efforts made by Council formations and other institutions under of the Cardiff process, by demonstrating that it is necessary, that it can be mutually beneficial for the sectors concerned and the environment, and that appropriate instruments and solutions exist and can be developed to achieve it. This implies in particular:
5.2.1. At Community level
i) Promoting win-win solutions:
More emphasis must be placed on setting out how environmental integration can help achieve other sectoral objectives, by identifying mutually beneficial solutions to problems. The Commission together with Member States should identify such solutions and examples of best practice. For example, in transport, reductions in congestion, through congestion charging or modal shift for example, may improve mobility and reduce costs to the economy, whilst improving air quality [27]. Improving the environmental quality of less favoured regions can be an important factor in attracting private investment or developing tourist activity in a region, and can therefore foster regional development with cohesion benefits. Promising areas include the promotion of environmental technologies.
[27] Indeed, the new Eurovignette proposal encourages Member States to differentiate the tolls. This new framework, when adopted by the Council and the Parliament, holds the potential for making an important contribution to improve the environmental performance of the transport sector, provided that Member States make use of the possibilities offered by the directive.
ii) Demonstrating that environmental integration is feasible:
In parallel, there is a need to develop innovative instruments and approaches that can actively foster environmental integration while minimising economic and social costs. Legislation, while remaining one of the main means of achieving environmental objectives, needs to be complemented with a wider range of policy instruments to help attain those objectives in the most cost-effective way, while taking full account of economic and social considerations. As indicated in the EU SDS, the 6 EAP and ETAP, measures that lead to the internalisation of environmental costs offer one of the fastest routes for environmental integration as a successful internalisation means that price signals would reflect the real environmental costs, thus informing the decisions of both economic operators and policy makers in the concerned sectors. This internalisation of costs is facilitated by the use of market-based instruments to promote environmental objectives as illustrated by the recently adopted emissions trading scheme, or the directive on the taxation of energy products. There are many advantages to the use of market-based instruments. As flexible mechanisms, they allow sectoral actors to develop cost-effective approaches to reducing environmental impacts. By internalising environmental costs, they can lead to changes in behaviour. Yet, competence in this field principally lies with the Member States and the full deployment of some market based instruments at Community level suffers from this situation, as exemplified by the time needed to adopt measures in the area of taxation.
Other instruments that are designed to contribute to environmental integration include the thematic strategies foreseen in the 6th EAP (soils; marine; air quality; resources; waste and recycling; urban; pesticides) and the Strategy on environment and health. These strategies exemplify the Commission's new integrated approach to policy-making in the environmental field. They are being developed with the full consultation of stakeholders and the involvement of the concerned policy sectors, so as to promote environmental integration and policy convergence. The strategies will set out clear quantifiable targets and, where possible, promote the use of market-based instruments. They provide a test bed for innovative approaches. [28]
[28] Development of the strategies takes place in two stages. The first stage, completed in 2003, resulted in a Communication defining the problems to be addressed and outlining proposed solutions. The second stage will define the objectives and the various means and policy measures, and will be completed by 2005. Three strategies will complete the second phase in 2004 (soils, pesticides and waste prevention and recycling); in parallel, an Action Plan on Environment and Health will be developed as a follow up to the adoption of an overarching strategy on this matter in 2003.
The full implementation as of January 2004 of the Extended Impact Assessments, as part of the Better regulation package and in the context of the Sustainable Development Strategy will allow spill-overs from one policy area to another or synergies to be identified and addressed, hence facilitating the identification and negotiation of trade-offs. Experience so far has confirmed that, properly used, extended impact assessments could be a powerful instrument for promoting environmental integration while ensuring that due account is taken of the economic and social dimensions of sustainable development.
iii) Illustrating the need for environmental integration:
Raising awareness of environmental problems and solutions available may sensitise the public and decision makers to the need to further environmental integration. Information can also be used to promote stakeholder participation for better environmental policy making and encourage changes in behaviour.
Efforts to gather and publish information and data on the state of the environment, the pressures it is under and their sources and the distance that remains to achieve the targets set must be strengthened and should go hand in hand with efforts to summarise this information, notably through indicators.
5.2.2. At national level
To achieve the full potential benefits of the Cardiff process and related efforts in terms of environmental and sustainable development improvements on the ground, efforts to improve integration at EU level need to be backed by commitments and action at national level.
For instance, stringent implementation by Member States of the directives on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) [29] and on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) [30] is key to advancing environmental integration through projects, plans and programmes at national level.
[29] Directive 85/337/EEC, amended by Directive 97/11/EC. The EIA directive requires the environmental impacts of range of projects from different sectors to be taken into account before a decision is taken for the project to proceed
[30] Directive 2001/42/EC. A SEA allows the environmental consequences of certain plans and programmes to be identified and assessed during the programme or plan preparation, before their adoption
Furthermore, a regular exchange of good integration practice at national, regional and local level could help put integration into effect. There is a wealth of experience at all levels, notably in the framework of local Agenda 21 initiatives, which should be pooled and made more widely accessible. The review of the environmental dimension of national sustainable development strategies currently under preparation will provide a first analytical tool to assess approaches, with a view to highlighting and fostering exchange of good practice. Measures to strengthen existing networks of environmental integration and sustainable development practitioners and to simplify and speed up the exchange of information between practitioners should be explored. For example, the development of an interactive Internet portal to support access to and updates of information on relevant national, regional and local experience could be considered.
Continued political commitment to the use of such approaches at EU and national level is needed to enable the process of environmental integration to bring further results on the ground.
6. CONCLUSION
While this stocktaking has shown the positive results of the Cardiff process, both in terms of raising the profile of environmental integration and in terms of concrete improvements in some sectors, it also points to a number of weaknesses in implementation. Amongst other issues, it emphasises the need to improve the consistency of strategies across Council formations and for greater emphasis on good practice in terms of content and implementation. It also points to a set of measures at Community and national levels to support sectoral Councils in their efforts under the Cardiff Process to integrate environmental concerns into their policies and to help maximise the benefits of these efforts in terms of concrete environmental improvements. Further efforts are also needed at national level to fully implement the decisions taken at Community level.
While sustainable development involves dealing with economic, social and environmental policies in a mutually reinforcing way, environmental integration needs increased visibility and political support at the highest level. It should become a regular item on the agenda of the Spring European Council. In this respect and in line with the Presidency Conclusions to the March 2003 European Council, the European Commission will carry out an annual stocktaking of environmental integration as a complement to the Environment Policy Review, which will feed into the Commission's Spring Report and the Spring European Council debate.
Forthcoming opportunities to further promote environmental integration should also be seized:
* The Review of the Sustainable Development Strategy planned for 2004- 2005 will examine progress made since 2001 and identify priority actions to ensure delivery. This exercise will enable the EU to pinpoint where environmental integration gaps lie at EU level, hampering the EU's efforts to curb unsustainable environmental trends, and to make concrete proposals to address them.
* The mid-term review of the Lisbon strategy in 2005 offers an additional opportunity to examine how environmental integration and economic and employment growth could increasingly be mutually supportive.
* The Commission's emphasis on sustainable development in its Communication on the Union's next financial perspectives (2007 onwards) [31] will give an additional boost to further environmental integration, in particular in the agricultural and regional policy. The adoption in 2004 of a Commission proposal for a regulation on the structural and cohesion funds in the period post-2006, setting new guidelines, will provide an opportunity to better integrate the environmental, economic and social pillars of sustainable development into cohesion policy.
[31] See Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, The Commission's legislative and work programme for 2004, COM(2003)645 final of 29 October 2003 (p. 5).
Environmental integration is a key condition for progressing towards sustainable development. It requires the unfailing and continuous commitment of all policy sectors at all levels of governance in the Union.