EUROPE: New Members Prove Environment-Friendly

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Apr 19 2004 (IPS) - The ten accession countries due to join the EU in May have greatly improved their environmental record, says environment commissioner Margot Wallstrom.

Presenting a report Monday on ’12 days left to enlargement – what about the environment?’, Wallstrom said that “almost 100 percent of the acquis relating to the environment have now been transposed by the new member states.”

The European Union (EU) will take on ten new members (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) May 1. They are all are required to adopt the EU’s aquis communitaire, or EU laws, as they become members of the bloc.

“All the new countries are for the most part on track to implement the acquis, in particular as regards horizontal environmental legislation such as air quality, waste management, water quality, chemicals and genetically modified organisms, noise, and nuclear safety and radiation protection,” she said.

The report says the main air pollutants in the accession countries have declined 60-80 percent and toxic metals by 50 percent, while organic matter pollution of water has decreased by as much as 80 percent.

The percentage of homes and other installations whose effluent is sent to waste water treatment plants doubled in the 1990s.

This area situated on the borders of Poland, the Czech Republic and the eastern part of Germany has traditionally lagged behind the rest of Europe in protecting biodiversity. But Wallstrom said the region is now an “environmental success”.

Salmon has returned to previously polluted rivers, forests earlier destroyed by acid rain are growing once again, and air quality levels are now similar to those within the EU’s existing member states.

Wallstrom pointed out that Poland halved its sulphur emissions during the 1990s, and that the Czech Republic has gone a long way towards cleaning up a 41-year legacy of communist rule that supported heavy industry.

Wallstrom said there are “still gaps in legislation on nature protection, waste and industrial pollution,” but she remained optimistic that such problems would either be sorted out before May 1 or, where an extended transitional period has been agreed, well within designated time limits.

Over the past several years the new member states have increasingly worked with the current member states to improve the environment.

The report says that to achieve “full implementation” of requirements, the new member states will have to spend on average between two to three percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on the environment. Current expenditure is generally well below this target.

The report says that the new member states are expected to outdo the current EU member states in combating greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

In a bid to reduce greenhouse gases, the EU is planning to launch the world’s first multinational emissions trading scheme by January 2005.

The scheme follows the EU’s promise of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent of 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. This is in accordance with the EU’s commitment to the Kyoto Protocol even if the agreement does not come into force.

But last month only five of the 15 EU member states – Austria, Finland, Denmark, Ireland and Germany – handed over their plans to the European Commission, the executive arm of the bloc. The accession countries have until April 30 to hand over their plans to the Commission.

Wallstrom was confident that they would be able to do so. “I don’t expect this to be problematic for the new member states,” she said. “They are really interested in this. I hope that all of them will be able to deliver.”

But WWF, the global conservation organisation, says that unless EU agricultural and regional development policies are fundamentally reformed, many of the environmental gains from accession will be lost.

“Holding onto the tremendous natural wealth in the accession countries will depend as much on decisions made in Brussels and other EU capitals as in the accession countries themselves,” Andreas Beckmann from WWF said in a statement Monday.

“Unless EU agriculture and regional development policies are fundamentally reformed, with firm and genuine commitments to nature conservation and sustainable development, we will have the same dramatic decline in natural capital as we have already had in Western Europe,” Beckmann said.

To ensure that environmental projects and initiatives are undertaken in Europe’s regions, WWF is calling on the European Commission to impose legally binding rules requiring EU member states to allocate funds for environmental projects, including those for nature protection.

“The outcome of negotiations on the future shape of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy will be critical in determining the future of the rich cultural landscapes in Poland and other accession countries,” said Irek Chojnacki, director of WWF-Poland.