# EUR-Lex - 52012DC0095 - EN

*|*

# 52012DC0095

**COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS Improving the delivery of benefits from EU environment measures: building confidence through better knowledge and responsiveness /* COM/2012/095 final */**

			*

			*

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

Improving the delivery of benefits from EU
environment measures: building confidence through better knowledge and
responsiveness

Introduction

The ideas set out in this Communication
respond to the December 2010 Environment Council request that the Member States
and Commission enhance and improve the implementation and enforcement of EU environment
legislation in order to improve the state of the environment and ensure a level
playing field.

The 2008 and 2011 Eurobarometer opinion
poll on attitudes of European citizens towards the environment confirmed that
for most citizens a healthy environment is as important to their quality of
life as the state of the economy and social factors.

However, the 2010 European Environment
State and Outlook of the European Environment Agency (EEA), confirms
that "the EU appears to be locked in a number of status-quo and downward
trends which are moving away from, rather than toward, sustainability".

How can we begin to reverse these trends? With
the exception of soil, our environment is already the subject of extensive EU environment
legislation, much of it long-established, so the main challenge is now one of effective
implementation.

Two issues stand out: the extent of our
knowledge about the state of the environment and how it is safeguarded; and
effective ways of dealing with problems on the ground.

Knowledge is already extensive on matters
such as urban air pollution levels and bathing water quality. In others, such
as biodiversity and land-use, it is patchier. Moreover, the picture is
difficult to fill in if we want to know precisely how implementation is undertaken
in a region, city or village. While often helpful, complaints sent to the
Commission and petitions submitted to the European Parliament are an incomplete
source of information.

Analysis and consultation conducted in the
framework of the preparations for a 7th Environmental Action
Programme clearly show that enhancing and improving implementation can be
considered a priority objective of European environment policy in itself. The
ambition of this communication is to examine means of helping Member States
achieve a fully systematic approach in knowledge collection and dissemination
and greater responsiveness to problems on the ground. Effective access to
justice is necessary but not sufficient, so it is proposed to also look at inspections
and surveillance, complaint mechanisms and formalising partnerships to ensure
implementation.

The ideas presented aim at complementing
the content of a 2008 communication on the subject[1] and, while focused on the
specificities of environment law as underlined by the Aarhus Convention[2], draw inspiration from the 2007
Communication, "A Europe of Results"[3], which stresses the importance of increased transparency at EU level
and observes that "complainants could in some cases enforce their
rights directly at national level in a more efficient way." [4]

The response to the present Communication
will feed into the preparations for the 7th Environmental Action
Programme. It may also lead to specific measures being proposed by the
Commission underpinned by impact assessments where necessary. When legislation
aims at other objectives in addition to the environmental ones (e.g. energy
legislation), the proposals set out here might need to be supplemented by
specific provisions, in particular on relations with certain stakeholders.

Why good implementation matters

Delayed or
inadequate implementation has many negative consequences. It ultimately harms
the environment and human health, generates regulatory uncertainty for industry
and puts in question the level playing field of the Single Market. The
long-term remediation costs – for example for clean-up of illegal waste sites and
restoration of damaged habitats – can be much higher than the costs of prevention.

The costs of not implementing current legislation are broadly
estimated at around €50 billion a year[5]. These relate not just to environmental but also to human health
impacts. For example, 20 % - 50 % of the European
population lives in areas where the air quality breaches European limit values
and the estimated annual costs in terms of health expenditure or days of work
lost run to billions of Euros.

In terms of
benefits, the Europe 2020 strategy observes that new sources of growth depend
critically on investing in knowledge and innovation. As the EU environment
industry is estimated to have an annual turnover in excess of €300 billion,
uncertainty about implementation possibilities, pathways and time-frames may
carry significant costs in terms of missed opportunities[6].

More specifically, full implementation of
EU waste legislation is estimated to generate 400,000 jobs and have net costs
that are €72 billion per year lower than under the alternative scenario of non-implementation[7].

At the same time, innovative or improved
implementation methods offer the prospect of reduced administrative burden and
a more level playing field by making decision-making better informed as well as
more rigorous, predictable and coherent.

Why the EU needs to improve knowledge on
implementation

Knowledge about implementation covers, on
the one hand, the state of the environment and, on the other, all the required administrative
and other measures intended to protect and improve it.

EU environment laws contain rules that
generate information, for example air quality monitoring requirements, as well
as rules that require information to be made available to the wider public.

During the past ten years the way in which
knowledge is structured and used has been strengthened, thanks in part to a
revision of the Access to Information Directive[8],
the adoption of the INSPIRE Directive[9],
work pursuant to the 2008 Commission Communication Towards a Shared
Environmental Information System (SEIS)[10]
and increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT) at EU and
national levels. However, knowledge about implementation remains problematical.

For example, it is not always simple to
identify quickly the provisions of national law that correspond to a given
provision of a directive. Monitoring efforts are uneven across Europe and the
information generated is patchy and often out-of-date. Environmental information
is available through individual requests rather than systematically published.

Better information at national, regional
and local level would allow identification of the main problems and the most
appropriate and efficient ways to address them. Greater application of the SEIS
principle of "report once, use often" would help streamline
information demands.

Improving knowledge on implementation

The chief responsibility for implementation
lies within Member States and this is where the greatest environmental
information needs and expectations of citizens, administrations and businesses arise.
Meeting these requires information systems to be set up by Member States that
generate, manage and communicate information that shows how EU laws are
implemented and complied with in practice[11].
The information concerned must cover the physical state of the environment as
well as administrative measures, stable elements[12] as well as dynamic ones[13]. It needs to serve different
end-users, helping competent authorities to manage their tasks, monitoring bodies
to verify compliance and the public to understand how they and their
environment are protected. This only works if there is close collaboration
between environmental scientists, statisticians, ICT experts and administrators
in order to deliver information that is, on the one hand, scientifically and
legally robust and, on the other, meaningful to the general public, experts and
policy-makers. Finally, the Aarhus Convention envisages progressive improvement
in online environmental information.

The objectives described below aim at examining
how to engage more actively with Member States so that they put in place
effective information systems; providing better aggregated information at EU
level; ensuring confidence in the information generated as a whole; and helping
Member States to address data gaps and more effectively monitor land-cover
changes.

Objective: Engaging with Member States
to put in place more effective information systems on implementation

For all key EU obligations in the environmental
field, an information system should be in place that would allow implementation
to be tracked in the most efficient and timely way possible, in line with the
Aarhus Convention.

By way of illustration, for the many
thousands of industrial and other installations across Europe subject to
specific controls, it would be appropriate to have information online relating
to the key environmental provisions applicable. For example, this would allow all
categories of user to check easily via an internet portal and an interactive
map whether a specific facility has an authorisation and whether any problems
identified by monitoring data or otherwise are being addressed.

The Access to Information Directive already
contains minimum requirements on active and systematic dissemination of
information as well as a general duty to ensure that information is up-to-date,
accurate and comparable[14].
However, until now, these provisions have not been systematically linked to information
on implementation of and compliance with individual EU environment laws.

The
Commission will assess

·
How the effectiveness of the Access to
Information Directive could be enhanced. Options include development of
best-practice guidance and/or proposed strengthening of the existing provisions.

·
The feasibility for Member States, with support
from the Commission, to develop structured implementation and information frameworks
(SIIFs) for all key EU environment laws. These would be designed to clarify the
main provisions of a directive as well as identify the types of information needed
to demonstrate how EU law is being implemented on the ground. SIIFs would be
aimed at existing legislation and, together with initiatives under SEIS,
would guide the development by Member States of information systems that track
implementation on the ground on a constant basis.

·
How EU funding could be used for the development,
upgrading and deployment within Member States of relevant interoperable information
systems and related training.

Objective: Improve EU-level information

Improved information systems within Member
States would need to be complemented by better EU-wide overviews to demonstrate
a level playing field. The EEA has developed, together with the statistical
office of the European Union (Eurostat) and Joint Research Centre (JRC), an
increasing role in processing monitoring and other data reported by Member
States to the Commission. For example, the Commission's
annual bathing water quality report, which is prepared with the support of the
EEA, provides a comprehensive overview using geo-referenced data for
more than 21,000 bathing waters across Europe. An internet site allows users to
download data and check interactive maps, from the European level down to individual
places. Pilot
exercises involving the EEA are under development on air quality and waste to enhance overall implementation.

The
Commission will examine

·
How the public could be provided with systematic
and improved online information on implementation, including through the use of
transparent monitoring tools and benchmarks.

·
How to continue the work with Member States to extend
the approach used in the Bathing Water Directive across all relevant EU
environment laws and in collaboration with the EEA where appropriate.

Objective: Help ensure confidence in the
information generated at national, regional and local levels

Confidence in EU environment legislation
depends on an equivalence of effort across Member States in the extent and
reliability of state-of-the-environment monitoring and other exercises that
generate information. Given its evolving role in environmental data processing
and validation, the EEA is well placed to help.

The
Commission plans to continue working with the EEA, in line with its statutory
remit, so that the Agency can

·
Assist the Commission in assuring the quality of
state-of-the-environment monitoring arrangements at national level, examining monitoring
systems to ensure that they are broadly comparable, fit-for-purpose and adequately
focused on the greatest risks.

·
Carry out other tasks related to providing
information on implementation of EU environment measures.

Objective: Close important information
gaps on compliance promotion and enforcement, and land-cover monitoring

There is a lack of data on the compliance
and enforcement work being undertaken at national level by inspectors,
prosecutors and courts. This means that choices between different approaches to
compliance, including potentially promising complementary ones involving
incentives, are not facilitated.

Monitoring and responding to land-cover
changes is central to the success of much EU environment legislation such as the
control of illegal waste operations and management of rare habitats.
Technological advances, as in earth-observation techniques, provide
opportunities, including o in terms of reduced monitoring costs that are not
yet being systematically exploited.

The
Commission considers that improvements could be achieved through:

·
Working with Member States and opening a
dialogue with key networks of inspectors, prosecutors and judges in order to
identify the crucial categories of information and best means of collecting and
collating data.

·
An initiative on the use by Member States of
earth observation techniques to extend the effectiveness of implementation
monitoring on the ground.

Why the EU needs to improve responsiveness
at national, regional and local levels

Improved knowledge will contribute to better
delivery but it is not enough on its own. A key responsibility is implementation
monitoring provided through bodies and persons who have duties and/or
powers and rights to enquire into, oversee, verify, advise or ensure
accountability in respect of compliance obligations. These include national
inspectors, ombudsmen, prosecutors, courts, auditors and NGOs and citizens
exercising participatory rights and submitting representations. At EU level,
the Commission, Parliament, Court of Justice, European Ombudsman and EEA all
exercise relevant roles.

As guardian of the Treaties, the Commission
uses its enforcement powers to address an absence of required end-results.
However, the high number of infringements, complaints and petitions related to EU
environment legislation points to a need generally to reinforce implementation monitoring
within Member States.

Improving responsiveness at national,
regional and local levels

The Commission proposes to examine a suite
of initiatives which could address this challenge. Although the initiatives can
stand individually on their own merits, they are complementary and will be more
effective in combination. For example, improved access to justice without
improved complaint-handling may leave citizens frustrated in situations where
they do not wish to go to court.

Objective: Improve the inspections and surveillance
applying to EU legislation

Inspections and surveillance at national
level are important in ensuring trust in the requirements of EU environment
legislation. Inspections of industrial facilities already benefit from a
framework that includes the minimum inspection criteria contained in Recommendation
2001/331/EC[15]
and binding sectoral provisions. However, beyond the domain of industrial facilities,
the full range of activities having a potential significant adverse impact on
the environment – from groundwater abstraction to trade in protected species – would
benefit from additional provisions on inspections and surveillance, to make these
more streamlined and risk-based, for instance. Given the cross-cutting nature
of EU environment law – for example, as between water and nature legislation –
such an approach should include full coherence and coordination amongst
competent national authorities.

The context for addressing inspections and surveillance
at national level also includes demands to secure a level playing field and the
necessary degree of cooperation and consistency on issues having a trans-frontier
character with a view to improving mutual trust between Member States.

The
Commission considers that improvements may be appropriate by

·
Upgrading the existing framework for inspections
and surveillance

·
Assessing, for all new legislation, the value of
including specific inspection and surveillance provisions, taking into account
the experience with existing binding provisions;

·
Assessing options for complementing national
inspections and surveillance in a targeted way at EU level, including

·
An EU-level inspection and surveillance capacity;

·
Limited inspection role for the Commission that
respect Member States' administrative autonomy, the Ozone Regulation[16] offering a possible model, or
powers to audit Member State inspections as provided for in the Animal
Experiments Directive[17];

·
More systematic use of peer-review inspections,
drawing on existing initiatives of IMPEL (the network of national inspectors);

·
Arrangements for independent expert input on an ad
hoc basis to address situations that present very particular implementation
challenges.

Objective: Better complaint-handling and
mediation at national level

There is currently no general framework on
how competent authorities should respond to complaints at national level. A
dual approach addressing direct and review-stage complaint-handling would make it
more likely that concerns and grievances will be dealt with in a consistent way
and sooner rather than later.

Complaint-handling systems can improve the
inter-action between citizens and authorities but there may be situations in
which mediation or other similar dispute resolution mechanisms will add a
further useful dimension.

Improvements in complaint-handling at
national level would in no way affect the right to complain to the Commission
but should reduce the citizen frustration that can arise when EU institutions
are asked to make up for a lack of national remedies. Such improvements would
also be consistent with a recent trend in other EU policies, notably consumer
legislation[18],
to make specific provision for grievance and dispute settlement at national
level.

The
Commission considers it worthwhile to explore an initiative designed to improve
the handling by Member States of complaints. This initiative might involve, for
example, binding general criteria or non-binding general criteria complemented
by sector-specific binding provisions and would cover:

Complaints
focusing on the need for competent authority intervention. EU complaint-handling criteria would aim at a level playing field in
terms of the responsiveness by competent authorities and provide general safeguards
on matters such as confidentiality, record-keeping and timeliness.

Complaints
focusing on claims of administrative inaction or inadequacy. EU complaint-handling criteria would aim to provide citizens with a
means of bringing their dissatisfaction to the attention of an independent national
administrative review body such as an ombudsman.

Complaints
for which mediation or some other similar dispute resolution mechanism may be
appropriate. EU criteria would make provision for such
a mechanism to cover situations where the parties see mutual advantage in an
amicable resolution.

Objective: Improve access to justice.

Specific provisions aimed at ensuring
reasonable access to justice are currently restricted to a few areas of EU
environment law. A 2003 Commission proposal[19]
aimed at facilitating wider access has not progressed but the wider context has
changed, in particular the Court of Justice has confirmed recently that national
courts must interpret access to justice rules in a way which is compliant with
the Aarhus Convention[20].
National courts and economic as well as environmental interests face
uncertainty in addressing this challenge.

The
Commission considers it appropriate to explore how greater certainty could be provided
for national courts and economic and environmental interests. Possibilities include:

·
Developing guidance to take account of a
significant recent body of case-law in order to improve implementation of existing
access to justice provisions[21]
as well as

·
Defining at EU level the conditions for
efficient as well as effective access to national courts in respect of all
areas of EU environment law.

Objective: Deliver improvements in
environmental outcomes through capacity-building and implementation agreements
that engage Member States

At European level, networks have been
created by ombudsmen, environment agencies, inspectors, lawyers working with
governments, judges and prosecutors. However, despite a number of
initiatives, the potential of cooperation has not been fully realised across
all networks. Challenges include ensuring that networks have the necessary
secretariat stability to function effectively over extended time-periods and
identifying and undertaking projects and initiatives that help network members
and facilitate implementation.

Networks may be useful within Member States,
too, for example to better involve regional and local government in
implementation. Linking national inspectors or prosecutors can also make a
significant contribution[22].

Where problems emerge, there is a need for
clear commitments from Member States to put in place measures, with benchmarks
and timelines, to deliver the required results. These commitments need to be
formalised and publicly available, so that Member States, the European
Parliament, businesses and citizens can have confidence that their concerns are
being addressed within a structured framework. This challenge could be
addressed through partnership implementation agreements designed to help
deliver improved environmental outcomes.

The
Commission considers that improvements could be achieved through

·
Active cooperation with EU networks, focusing on
their distinct roles and strengths avoiding duplication and facilitating
trans-network communication. The outputs of cooperation will respect the
autonomous roles of both the Commission and the networks. They might cover
support for training of prosecutors and investigators as well as judges. Possible
new outputs of such networks include :

·
information on successful complementary
approaches to compliance and enforcement;

·
advice or other forms of assistance to national
ombudsmen on investigation of complaints related to EU environment law;

·
suggested criteria for employing administrative
and criminal sanctions in the case of prosecutors;

·
advice on how to close data gaps on compliance
promotion and enforcement work at national level;

·
general advice on the implementability and
enforceability of EU environment proposals.

·
Co-organisation of events and conferences on
implementation with the Committee of the Regions and creation of a technical
platform for co-operation on the environment along the lines of the platform
already established on health

·
Implementation agreements that commit, without
prejudice to the provisions of the Treaties and the Commission's role as
guardian of the Treaties, Member States to actions having either the preventive
aim of strengthening the capacity to deliver effective implementation or, where
appropriate, the remedial aim of resolving specific problems through targeted
action. Partnership implementation agreements could proactively direct EU
assistance towards improved implementation structures within Member States and
might be linked to other initiatives in this Communication, such as effective
information systems, complaint-handling mechanisms and inspections. They could
also, on a case by case basis, endorse Member State remedial plans to resolve specific
problems through targeted and adequately-resourced programmes of work featuring
milestones, guarantees of transparency and other safeguards.

Conclusion

This communication supplements the
previously mentioned 2007 and 2008 communications by developing ideas primarily
aimed at providing Member States with better tools for improving implementation
on the ground.

Knowledge and responsiveness are
complementary facets of implementation. To give just one example, better
knowledge can enable customs authorities to deploy better control strategies
for illegal trade in waste and endangered species

Implementation has a cost. But the cost of
non-implementation is very often much higher, and therefore taking the steps
proposed in this communication represents a sound investment not only for the
future but also for the present.

This Communication is addressed to the
European Parliament, Member States, their citizens and all actors in the area
of implementation and enforcement of environment law. The 7th
Environmental Action Programme should ensure a proper follow up and specific
measures will be subject to impact assessment.

[1]               COM(2008) 773 final

[2]               Convention on access to information, public
participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters

[3]               COM(2007) 502, final

[4]               These ideas will be shared with the enlargement
countries so that they can make use of them to plan for and improve
implementation from the start of alignment with the environment acquis

[5]               "The costs of not
implementing the environmental acquis", COWI, 2011.

[6]               Ibid.

[7]               "Implementing EU Waste Legislation for Green
Growth", Bio Intelligence Service, 2011

[8]               Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental
information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC, OJL 41, 14.2.2003

[9]               Directive 2007/2/EC establishing an Infrastructure
for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE), OJL 108, 25.4.2007

[10]             COM(2008)46 final, 1.2.2008

[11]             With regard to the transposition of directives into
national law see Joint Political Declaration of 27 October 2011 of the European
Parliament, the Council and the Commission on explanatory documents, OJC 369,
17.12.2011.

[12]             Such as the location of designated areas.

[13]             Such as monitoring data.

[14]             Articles 7 and 8

[15]             Recommendation 2001/331/EC providing for minimum
criteria for environmental inspections in Member States, OJL 118, 27.4.2001

[16]             Regulation (EC) 1005/2009 on substances that deplete
the ozone layer, OJL 286, 31.10.2009

[17]             Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used
for experimental purposes, OJL 276, 20.10.2010

[18]             Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of
the Council of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in
electricity and repealing Directive 2003/54/EC, OJL 211, 14.8.2009

[19]             COM(2003)624 final

[20]             Case C-240/09

[21]             Directive 2003/35/EC

[22]             Examples from Ireland and the Flemish Region of Belgium
may be cited.