The Communication also offers practical advice on how to develop a clear and credible investment programme for accession. For this task the countries can receive support from the Commission's Priority Environmental Programme for Accession (PEPA). The programme encourages exchange of best practices between Candidate Countries, and is developing a database of environmental projects in the Candidate Countries to help them identify and prepare priority projects for the medium and long term.
Even if recent estimations place the total cost of compliance for the ten Central and Eastern European Countries lower than initially estimated - between 79 and 110 billion euros instead of 120 billion euros the need for investment planning remains crucial.
The EU's new financial instruments make sure that Candidate Countries are not left alone facing these costs. Community assistance of 500 million euros a year between 2000-2006 is available through the Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession (ISPA), which was designed to fund environmental investments. By ensuring that applicant countries have the sufficient financial support to introduce new environmental policy, the EU is investing in the future of Europe.
Several applicant countries have already met the challenge by preparing concrete and detailed investment plans, and using all available sources of finance to implement them. Many ministries of Environment in Central and Eastern European have been restructured and reinforced. Several bilateral environmental agreements with neighbours have been made. In addition, national environmental strategies have been prepared and adopted and new financing mechanisms like environmental funds are mobilising substantial resources for environmental investments. During all this restructuring, the countries have contributed to ever increasing regional and international environmental work. Most applicant countries are already in the process of developing their environmental accession strategies and work programmes. Additional resources for required investments are being mobilised and the dialogue between the accession countries and the EU is expanding rapidly. However, for others there is still a long way to go. It is clear that in some countries the information on the effort needed to achieve compliance is still not available, and prioritising investment needs for specific directives is therefore a problem. However even a small improvement in some of the applicant countries is better than nothing and it is unlikely that if the applicant countries were not aiming to join the EU, they would probably not introduce such stringent environmental laws.
The prospect of European enlargement has raised the issue of the environment in the existing Member States and increased desire for a stronger, more integrated environment policy. Development of environmental legislation in the EU made considerable progress during Sweden's term of office as President of the EU in 2001. During Sweden’s presidency, four environmental issues were particularly focused upon: a new EU environmental programme, work on climate change, chemicals policy and more environment-friendly products. Environment ministers were able to agree on these issues and even agreed that in future environmental issues in the EU will be just as important as economic and social issues in the future.
The various European ministers for the environment agreed on new guidelines for environmental work in the EU over the next ten years, the so-called sixth Environmental Action Programme. The Commission presented its proposal for a new sixth Environmental Action Programme for the EU. Since then the Council and European Parliament have introduced more stringency and precision into the Commission's proposal in order to make it clearer and more concrete. The environmental action programme adopted includes objectives, timetables and programmes of measures, and will be more binding than previous environmental action programmes.
Among the things included is that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be introduced. In addition, a long-term climate objective for stabilising the amount of greenhouse gases has been agreed. There will also be considerable reductions in the volume of waste produced, with more priority given to recycling and reuse, while the use of pesticides will be considerably reduced and subsidies to fossil fuels will be abolished.
The sixth Environmental Action Programme has been a major basis of the EU strategy for sustainable development. The sustainability strategy means that ecological issues will be given the same weight as social and economic issues when formulating polices for the future. Environmental aspects will be weighed into all proposals drawn up within the major policy areas of the EU. Every year, at the annual summit, the EU heads of state and government will follow up the course and progress of work on the strategy for sustainable development. The new sustainability strategy will concentrate on four themes: climate, transport, public health and natural resources.
Therefore the prospect of European enlargement has forced the existing member states to formalise and agree on a universal environmental policy which will enable it to encourage an increased pro-environment policy in applicant countries. This is due to an increased awareness in the last fifteen years that because the environment is trans-boundary. Major disasters such as Chernobyl have made European countries realise that a good domestic environmental policy is not good enough if its neighbours do not follow a similarly good policy as environmental damage caused by one state will affect the environment of another. A prime example of this has been the case of acid rain in Scandinavia, where polluted wind from the UK and Western Europe has caused serious environmental problems for the people and the environment of Scandinavia. Planned EU enlargement has forced the present Member States to adapt their environment policy and improve its environmental record which will have a positive impact on the European environment.
Across the European Union in its current form, there has been a massive increase in information regarding the environment which had leads to the various European countries increasingly favouring more pro-environmental policies. Following enlargement information on the state of the environment will be made more readily available to the general public in the new EU countries. According to the directive, public authorities and agencies must actively publicise environmental information to the general public, using, for example, electronic means. This may be information about laws, environmental reports, plans and programmes involving the environment. This can only lead to a greater awareness and respect for the environment which will benefit all Europeans.
The challenges of the enlargement for the candidate countries are significant, but the EU directives also bring very important benefits. Putting EU directives into practice is much more than just fulfilling the accession criteria. Up-grading the national environmental norms to match EU requirements will reduce air pollution, bring better quality of drinking water for people across Eastern Europe and improve waste management. It will eliminate the worst health hazards and improve people's living environment, for instance by reducing respiratory diseases. This is particularly important for groups such as children and the elderly.
The European Commission has financed a study on the benefits that the candidate countries can expect from EU environmental policy. The study confirms that all candidate countries will reap significant benefits from EU environmental directives. The total value of these benefits could range from 134 to 681 billion euros for the period of 1999-2020, or 12 to 69 billion euros annually.
The most significant benefit from EU directives on the environment will be improved public health. It is a fact that air pollution causes respiratory diseases, even premature deaths. According to the study, reaching EU air standards will reduce the number of cases of chronic bronchitis in the candidate countries by between 43,000 to 180,000. In addition, some 15,000 to 34,000 premature deaths could be avoided. Moreover, the health benefits from better air quality are not limited to the candidate countries. Pollution in the air or in the waterways, just like so many other environmental problems, travels freely across national borders.
For the existing EU member states, less air pollution from the candidate countries could imply public health benefits worth 6.5 billion euros annually. Environmental investments and more modern technology will improve economic efficiency and boost companies' productivity. For industry, more efficient waste management brings savings, and better water quality means lower production and maintenance costs, as equipment will no longer be damaged by dirty water.
In recent years most candidate countries have increased their expenditure on environmental protection or are planning to do so. Currently, investment expenditure on the environment ranges from 0.6 to three percent of GDP. For most countries this is still only a fraction of the required investments. For full implementation of the EU legislation the countries would have to spend on environment on average between two and three percent of GDP in the coming years. Candidate countries are not left alone to bear the costs. The EU's annual pre-accession aid has doubled from 1.5 billion euros to 3 billion euros for the period 2000 to 2006. Out of the total provided through the EU's financial instruments, approximately 20 percent per year goes to environmental investments.
While enlargement will have considerable benefits for the European environment, there are some negative issues that it is important to identify. At present with just fifteen members, the EU is already struggling to develop new environmental laws and policies that reflect the wishes of the member states. With more than twenty five member states, this process will be thrown into even greater chaos. While most officials accept that legislation usually spends between two and three years in development, an enlarged union could mean that the legislation process could in future take as long as seven years, which would be very detrimental to the environment as the EU will struggle to create legislation when a new environmental problem or crisis develops unexpectedly such as the present oil slick that occurred off the Northern coast of Spain.
One of the requirements for accession is that candidate countries must adopt and implement all the Union's legal acts. The Union's environmental law is a vast block of complex laws - around 270 - that are often highly technical and require specific skills from those who implement them. This is a serious problem in many candidate countries, where the environmental sector lacks funds and has problems attracting skilled staff. Secondly, putting these laws into practice can be expensive. Particularly so in the candidate countries, where environmental protection has not been a priority area in the past and where technologies used are often outdated. The European Commission has estimated that the 10 central and eastern candidate countries have had to invest between 80 and 110 billion euros to comply with EU environmental requirements. It could be argued that from a domestic viewpoint for many applicant countries there are more pressing issues that need dealing with than the environment.
Another problematic factor is time. In a relatively short period the candidate countries have had to pass hundreds of laws through their national legislatures. In many countries the challenge is aggravated by a chronically slow decision making process as well as opposition in some states towards European integration. The result of this could well be that not sufficient care has been taken to ensure that the laws will be implemented properly which could result in damage to the environment.
Realisation of the mistakes that have been made in the present union’s environmental policy has forced policy makers to redevelop their policy proposals however not always enough change has occurred for some environmental organisations. Andreas Beckmann, EU Accession Coordinator for the environmental organisation WWF has warned that “At the moment, we seem bent on encouraging, and even forcing, the accession countries to repeat our own past mistakes.” (1) Beckmann argues that the way the structural and cohesion fund is being used in acceding countries will be incredibly damaging to the European environment. Beckmann argues that the EU is sponsoring a similar form of development in countries such as Poland and Hungary as they did in Greece and Spain which included massive road construction subsidized by the EU taxpayer and hugely damaging to the environment. Among the controversial and potentially environmentally damaging plans in acceding countries is a highway going straight through Poland’s Biebrza National Park and the development of a canal linking the Danube with the Oder and Elbe rivers.
In conclusion, the enlargement of the European Union will have a positive effect for both existing members and future members. For the first time in European history, the majority of Europe will work under one environmental policy which will be one of the strictest and most environmentally friendly policies the world has ever seen. This is not to say that massive improvements will be immediate or that mistakes won’t be made in the lengthy process, however the greatest impact European enlargement will have on the environment is that the environment will rank as equally as important as economic and social policy across the European continent, which will force the environment to be treated properly and with the respect that it deserves which can only be of benefit to the people of Europe.
FOOTNOTES
All statistics are taken from
(1) http://www.wwf.pl/0304151613_newsen.php
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