AUTHORS: Marc Pallemaerts-0Kristof Geeraerts

IEEP, together with Ecologic, SYKE, BIO IS and IVM, has drawn up a report, which provides an independent assessment of the achievements of the 6th Environmental Action Programme (6EAP) across all four of its ‘key environmental priorities’. The study has been requested by MEP Riitta Myller, rapporteur of the European Parliament Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, as a result of the publication by the Commission of its mid-term review on the 6EAP in April 2007.

The study has shown that the efforts of the institutions to attain the ‘priority objectives set out’ are quite deficient in many areas of environmental policy and that the state of implementation of the programme at mid-term does not indicate that most of these objectives are likely to be effectively fulfilled before 2012. Progress towards the 6EAP objectives has been made across all four ‘key environmental priorities’, but in most cases this progress is not sufficient to put the EU on course to achieve the targets agreed upon in 2002.

The Thematic Strategies have increased the importance of the pre-legislative processes and created additional opportunities for stakeholder involvement and a more strategic approach to EU legislative policy. However, together with impact assessment, the development of Thematic Strategies has considerably lengthened the duration of the environmental policy-making process, effectively delaying the formulation of concrete policy proposals and adoption of resulting measures.