progress on eu sustainable development strategy

8/7/2019 Progress on EU Sustainable Development Strategy

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Progress on EU SustainableDevelopment Strategy

Final Report

Client: European Commission, Secretariat General

ECORYS Nederland BV



Legal address:

ECORYS Nederland BV

P.O. Box 4175

3006 AD Rotterdam

Watermanweg 44

3067 GG Rotterdam

Th N th l d



Table of contents

Executive Summary 5 Background and Aims 5 Main findings 6 Conclusions 13 Recommendations 16

1. Introduction 17 1.1 Background to the EU SDS 17 1.2 Aims of his report 18 1.3 How the report has been prepared 19

1.4 About the structure of this report 20

2. Climate change and clean energy 21 2.1 Introductory remarks on objectives and targets 21 2.2 Main challenges and problems facing the EU 23 2.3 Appropriate policy response and EU action 29 2.4 Member State action 37 2.5 Conclusions and recommendations 40

3. Sustainable transport 45 3.1 Main challenges 45 3.2 Views on the appropriate policy response 48 3.3 EU action 50



5.3 EU action 75 5.4 Member State action 79 5.5 Conclusions and recommendations 82

6. Public health 85

6.1 Main challenges 85 6.2 Views on the appropriate policy response 87 6.3 EU action 89 6.4 Member State action 91 6.5 Conclusions and recommendations 94

7. Social inclusion, demography and migration 96

7.1 Main challenges 96 7.2 Views on the appropriate policy response 99 7.3 EU action 100 7.4 Member State action 102 7.5 Conclusions and recommendations 104

8. Global poverty and sustainable development challenges 106 8.1 Main challenges 107

8.2 Views on the appropriate policy response 110 8.3 EU action 110 8.4 Member State action 112 8.5 Conclusions and recommendations 114

9. Cross cutting policies 116 9.1 Education and training 116

9.2 Research and development 119 9.3 Financing and economic instruments 121 9.4 Communication, mobilising actors and multiplying success 123 9.5 Implementation, monitoring and follow-up 125 9.6 Conclusions 128



Executive Summary

Background and Aims

i. On 9th June 2006, the European Council approved the new EU Sustainable

Development Strategy (EU SDS)1. The main challenge of the current EU SDS is to

gradually change the current unsustainable consumption and production patterns

and the non-integrated approach to policy-making. The overall aim of the renewed

EU SDS is to identify and develop actions to enable the EU to achieve continuousimprovement of quality of life both for current and for future generations, through

the creation of sustainable communities able to manage and use resources

efficiently and to tap the ecological and social innovation potential of the economy,

ensuring prosperity, environmental protection and social cohesion. The themes are:

1. Climate change and clean energy;

2. Sustainable transport;

3. Sustainable consumption and production;4. Conversation and management of natural resources;

5. Public health;

6. Social inclusion, demography, migration;

7. Global poverty and sustainable challenges.

The cross cutting policies are:

1. Education and training;

2. Research and development;3. Financing and Economic Instruments;

4. Communication, mobilising actors and multiplying success.

ii. Implementation, monitoring and follow up. The EU SDS requires the Commission

to submit every two years (starting in September 2007) a progress report on



iii. The aim of this study is to assist the Commission in producing the Communicationand the staff working paper which will address two key questions:

• What progress has been made by the EU and Member States in implementing

the EU SDS?

• Is the EU on track compared to the objectives set within the key themes and

policies of the strategy?

This study is taken forward under the Framework Contract for Economic Analysis

of Environmental Policies and of Sustainable Development(COWI/ECORYS/Cambridge Econometrics) and has been led by ECORYS

Netherlands/Brussels, in close-cooperation with COWI.

Main findings

iv. High importance is attached to climate change and clean energy; both the EU and

Member States give high importance to this theme and there is clear evidence that a

large number of diverse initiatives are being taken. Most attention is paid to

compliance with Kyoto, renewable energy, biofuels and energy efficiency targets.

However, much less attention is paid to post-2012 emission reductions, the

consistency of energy policy with competitiveness, security and broader

environmental targets. In addition, information is relatively scarce on adaptation to

climate change in other policies.

v. In the area of climate change and clean energy, there are a number of overlaps and

imperfections in the internal coherence within and between the individual

objectives/targets. In several cases, very different issues and levels of action are

included in one objective/target, making it a complex task to undertake a systematic

assessment of progress towards the objectives/targets in question. A further

problem is the lack of coherence between objectives/targets and actions. In a

logical framework approach, there should be a clear link between actions, outputs

and achievement of the objectives. This coherence is not clearly established, as

exemplified by adaptation to climate change, which has no corresponding actions

attached to it. For the purposes of the assessment in this report, we have analysed

each item included in the objectives/targets and actions of the SDS. On this basis,

we have subdivided three of the objectives/targets, and allocated the issues



mainstreaming energy and climate change issues into policies that may not be fullyaligned with the climate objectives. Examples of such policy areas include:

• Cohesion and structural funding;

• Trade policy;

• Agriculture, CAP;

• Research and technology development;

• Taxation, subsidies and other economic instruments;

•

External relations broadly speaking, including policies relating to security,development assistance and energy supply.

vii. In the area of sustainable transport, there is a focus on greenhouse gas emissions,

but only limited evidence of strategic thinking and overarching and well-founded

strategies. A range of key problems persist in the area of sustainable transport:

decoupling growth in demand for transport from economic growth and energy use

is one such problem. Ensuring that market prices reflect the real economic,

environmental and social costs of the different transport modes is another. Otherchallenges include stimulating technological innovations and their adoption to

improve the performance of the road transport sector vis-à-vis emissions and

energy consumption; meeting the mobility needs of the urban population and of

groups with reduced mobility. Reconciling the growing demand for air transport in

Europe with environmental considerations is yet another challenge. Demand for air

transport is expected to double by 2020. The current capacity of the airport and air

traffic control infrastructure is inadequate for accommodating this demand.Meeting future demand for air transport is also going to pose challenges with

regards to the safety of air transport4.

viii. With regard to the progress reached by objective, there is only limited reason for

optimism in the area of sustainable transport. Decoupling is not happening: growth

of freight transport volumes has outpaced economic growth since 1995 and growth

of passenger freight transport has exceeded economic growth between 1990 and

2002. Growth in transport related energy use has exceeded growth in energy use inall sectors: transport’s share of total energy consumption is increasing and oil

provides 98% of the energy used by the transport sector. Greenhouse gas

emissions from transport are increasing and it is doubtful whether the Kyoto targets

in this area can be met. The fleet average of 140g CO2 /km by 2008 is unattainable

(i 2006 th fl t 162 CO /k ) A i ti d iti t



fatalities have been declining, but it is unlikely that the number of fatalities in 2010will be half the number in 2000, especially in light of recent reports on the topic.

ix. It is recommended that the processes used for evaluating sustainable transport

projects need to be modified so as to enable consideration of non-infrastructure,

and when relevant, non-transport alternatives (for example tele-working).

Financing of transport projects with European and national funds should be made

contingent on meeting specified targets (for example, air quality, and noisestandards). The potential role of non-motorised transport in meeting mobility

needs is to be further investigated. Furthermore, the availability and quality of data

in the area of transport policy is unsatisfactory and needs to be remedied.

Currently, most transport policy decisions are based on modelling outcomes that

have not been sufficiently validated with real data. Targets in this area should in

future be binding. Additionally, urban transport should be given more attention and

prominence in any future sustainable transport strategy.

x. Although a wide range of actions is being initiated, there is only limited evidence in

the area of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) that countries are

scratching beyond the surface of this fundamental objective. Moreover, it is

doubtful whether the EU SDS has sufficient leverage in this domain to trigger

change. The international SCP concept is itself poorly defined. However, it is

clear that a focus on just one aspect of SCP is not sufficient to drive change in

consumption and production patterns. Furthermore, many current initiatives takethe form of action plans, programmes and policy reviews whereas it remains to be

demonstrated how well these can be translated into real action and progress on the

ground.

xi. The horizontal nature of SCP means that it affects all other themes within the EU

SDS. As such, the question arises whether including it in the strategy on equal

terms as the other themes actually furthers, or rather impedes, progress towards

SCP. We therefore recommend either making SCP a cross cutting issue, rather thanan independent theme, or better defining the concept and making several

clarifications. If SCP is maintained as an independent theme, it must be

demonstrated that so doing adds value. If this can be demonstrated, it is necessary

to:

P id l d fi iti f th h t i ti f thi th hi hli hti th



ethical considerations that are not easily influenced by legislative interventions.Changing these patterns is a lengthy process that also requires non-conventional

initiatives. Here, the role of policy makers is to promote dialogue, and encourage

societal experimentation and learning processes.

xiii. Success is partial at best in the area of conservation and natural resource

management. Most progress has been made in halting biodiversity loss and

designating Natura 2000 areas. However, the key question about how to reconcileeconomic growth with more sustainable patterns of economic development remains

unanswered. Europe still has high absolute and relative levels of material intensity

which is the main driver of resource extraction and use. A major and obvious

challenge is how resources should be used more efficiently, but also how to

monitor the effects of shifting natural resource extraction to non-EU states as the

EU is importing more of its requirements from abroad.

xiv. A variety of policy options is available to support better management and moreefficient use of natural resources. These commonly include economic measures

such as ecological fiscal reforms (e.g. material input and energy taxes), reforms of

the subsidy systems (e.g. temporary support for development of new eco-efficient

technologies and materials), certificates trading systems, and eco-efficient public

procurement. Focussing on key sectors that are either directly (e.g. mining,

agriculture, fisheries) or indirectly (e.g. energy, transport, and industry) responsible

for large amounts of natural resource extraction will benefit the efficiency of theselected mix of instruments. Currently, Member States tend to neglect these issues

in their reports to a certain extent and put considerably more weight on biodiversity

strategies and biological conservation.

xv. It is recommended that the EU develops indicators to measure progress against

international objectives, which will help to place the EU's performance in an

international context. The work on sustainable development indicators by Eurostat

should be carried out in conjunction with other indicator work, including theLisbon structural indicators and the 6th Environmental Action Programme (6thEAP)

as well as UN-specific indicators on sustainable development. Despite progress in

nature reserve policies, there is no guarantee that current policies will be an

effective measure in the long term due to the dynamic nature of ecosystems and,

d t th i i di t bilit f i ’ h bit t f



particulate matter in the air, noise and ground-level ozone damage the health of thousands of people every year. Other pollutants, including pesticides, endocrine

disruptors, dioxins and PCBs persist in the environment, accumulating over time

and we do not know enough about their long-term effect on health.

xvii. Strong support exists for the approach proposed by the European Commission in

this area, namely:

• Taking action where European added value is clear and where challenges are of

a cross-border nature;

• Integration of health considerations in all relevant policies;

• Ensure preparedness for health threats and protection of European citizens

through enhanced cooperation between the Member States;

• Promote the use of "life-cycle" and "key setting" approaches;

• Focus on health education to children in schools, information to adults in the

workplace and information to the elderly through targeted tools;

• Provide more support for health research and for geriatric medicines or under-researched diseases and;

• Further develop the field of health technology assessment.

xviii. Several actions to promote good health on equal conditions and to improve

protection against health threats are undertaken or set up by Member States as well.

However, it is difficult to measure progress towards the EU SDS because:

•

There is no baseline measurement available (except for some of the structuralindicators measured by Eurostat);

• No clear (process and outcome) indicators/targets are defined in the SDS on

public health;

• Some objectives are related to more than one health indicators (e.g. health

determinants: overweight persons, present smokers);

• Health consequences of several environmental hazards are not well understood

due to complex interactions;

• Evidence on (cost-)effective measures is not clear cut in all instances (e.g.awareness campaigns).

xix. It is recommended to develop more quantitative outcome indicators to support

measurement of progress towards more general public health measures. A

it i t h ld b t bli h d t id i ti i f ti t

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air_en.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/noise/home.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ppps/home.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/endocrine/index_en.htm


http://ec.europa.eu/environment/dioxin/index.htm









increasingly accepted that European societies will need to adapt to demographicchange – rather than resist it. Demographic change can also provide opportunities,

for instance in areas such as the 'silver economy'.

xxi. Although the social dimension of sustainable development is not even reported on

by some Member States (e.g. Denmark, Poland), most countries provide reasonably

comprehensive reporting in this area. The importance of demographic change,

social protection and immigration are increasingly recognised as themes that are

vital for Europe's future. Most attention goes to the reduction of poverty and active

labour market policies – promoting the inclusion of various target groups (older

workers, younger workers, migrants, women and the disabled); this is an important

objective not only from the point of EU SDS but also from the perspective of the

Lisbon Strategy and deserves full support from many perspectives (perhaps apart

from sustainable transport angle as it could lead to an increase in the number of

commuters). Indeed, active labour market policies – resulting in higher

participation rates – appear to be a key response to the demographic, social andeconomic challenges ahead.

xxii. When restructuring the EU SDS in the area of social inclusion, demography and

migration, a stronger focus on a restricted number of objectives appear to be most

crucial for retention, namely:

1. Reduce the risk of poverty an social exclusion, focusing on child poverty;

2. Modernise social protection in view of demographic change;

3. Increase overall labour market participation (including females, younger, older,

disabled, migrants);

4. Develop an EU migration policy – including the need to strengthen

participation of migrants in social and economic life.

xxiii. The impression that emerges from the national reports is that the objective of

addressing global poverty and sustainable development is overstretched – and

often beyond the scope of individual Member States' influence. The fundamentalproblem in the area of global poverty and sustainable development seems to be

twofold. Firstly, the scale and scope of the problem: the effects of global warming

on developing countries are of a scale beyond the intervention power of any single

nation and the longer term effects are very uncertain. A second key problem lies in

the tensions between developmental goals taking into account the still expected



particularly important to them – which may lead to a rather patchy approach andnot necessarily a good basis for monitoring overall progress in this area. A broad

support basis is, therefore, emerging amongst Member States for the establishment

of a UN Environmental Organisation. Within the light of expected and targeted

increases in Official Development Assistance, a stronger emphasis on the

effectiveness and efficiency of such aid would have been expected (Paris

Declaration). Those Member States that are currently building up their external

development aid strategies have a unique opportunity to include the SD dimension

immediately – yet there is little sign that this is actually happening.

xxv. Beyond the horizon lie new and complex challenges – the social and environmental

impact of the demand for bio-fuels, the increased demand for commodities from

emerging markets and their interrelations. In light of these challenges, it is

recommended to focus the objectives of the EU SDS in this area and to distinguish

between wider objectives (beyond the reach of the EU as a whole) and specific

objectives (referring to EU objectives).

xxvi. Reporting on the cross-cutting themes is rather problematic; by formally giving the

cross cutting themes the same rank as the seven key challenges, the EU SDS of

June 2006 makes clear that it attaches equal importance to them. However, the

strategy does not provide a clear frame of reference against which progress on the

cross-cutting themes could be measured. In this respect, the EU SDS it is open to a

certain degree of interpretation what exactly is to be achieved under each headingand what measures are to be taken. The fact that, in contrast to the seven key

challenges, there is no subdivision into operational objectives and targets on the

one, and actions on the other side, adds to that.

xxvii. Education and training is among the cross-cutting themes that have received

considerable attention in the progress reports, and Austria, France and Sweden are

good examples. However, the dominant stream of reporting shows (too) strong a

focus on school education and neglect of adult- and continuing education, as wellas vocational education and training. In many reports, the role education and

training are to play in the concept of SD is merely confined to teaching about the

environment and the importance of its preservation. This approach does not

sufficiently acknowledge the breadth of the SD concept.



xxix. As concerns the usage of finance and economic instruments to promote SD, nearlyall Member States report an increase or the introduction of taxes related to energy

consumption or pollution. However, information on the usage of extra income

levied by these taxes is patchy and only a handful of states report an actual shift in

taxation from labour to resource and energy usage, as called for in the Strategy.

Finland is one of these few exceptions.

xxx. Only few MS seem to have a coherent strategy in place that would answer the

question as to what role communication and public involvement is to play in SD.

As a consequence, most MS report on a range of rather limited and seemingly

unrelated communication campaigns that address certain elements of SD and not

the concept as a whole. A clear rationale how communication and the involvement

of various groups of actors can contribute to progress in the SD area is almost

entirely missing. Overall, few MS really seem to have the ambition to enhance

public perception of SD issues on a broad scale.

xxxi. Clearly, the challenge for Member States to implement and report on SDS progress

is substantial. It requires good interministerial cooperation and horizontal methods

of working; the ability to synthesise all outputs varies considerably between

Member States.

Conclusions

1. The EU SDS remains relevant as the key European framework for promoting

sustainable development; sustainable development is becoming increasingly

important in European, national, regional and local policy making. The EU SDS

from June 2006 serves as a useful starting point for promoting sustainable

development in Europe. As such, its ambitions are high, particularly as it aims to

be coherent and broad-based, and addressing the fundamental behaviour of citizens

and firms is far from easy.

2. The EU SDS represents a prioritisation at a specific point in time. Various

sustainable development challenges are competing with each other. The 7 themes

can be considered equal in importance, but in practice the themes 1 and 2 may well



4. The contexts for Member States is different – there is no one size fits all. Theability to contribute to themes varies strongly; some Member States are not

willing/able to report on some themes at all – and this is sometimes indeed due to

the context. New Member States often face particular challenges, e.g. in areas of

energy conservation and pollution control. However, there is often more scope for

progress in the New Member States. For example, meeting the Kyoto targets in

this part of Europe is eased in the light of the closure of polluting factories.

5. EU and National SD are not the same; a fair amount of countries (about 1/3) prefer

to use structures that deviate from the EU SDS – often relying on the priorities as

set under National SD strategies. This is understandable in the light of the fact that

the alignment of these national strategies to the EU SDS will take time.

6. Signals of success can be recorded in all areas, but progress is overall encouraging

in areas of product lifecycle thinking and minimising waste; increasing the share of

national territory that receives protected status for the benefit of natureconservation; sustainable forestry initiatives, harder targets for various

environmental policy areas such as energy efficiency, climate change, organic

farming, and active labour market policies. Key initiatives are also taken to curb

lifestyle related diseases, pandemic preparedness, and to improve the handling of

chemicals, while Official Development Assistance is increasing in order to live up

to Millennium Objectives more globally.

7. Reporting on various themes falls short and Member States can be reluctant to look

back. Conservation and natural resource management notably is a theme where

reporting is rather weak – there is only limited or no reporting on areas where

progress is limited or where actions are non-existent. Even when taking into

account the various national contexts, some Member States did not to report on

specific themes at all which leads to considerable white spaces. An example is the

objective to address the impact of globalisation on workers – where only two

countries (France and Finland) record initiatives.

8. Certain areas of relevance to SD are not explicitly covered; e.g. spatial planning/

land use/urban development or addressing wastelands (New Member States)

receive only limited attention. Despite reference to Local Agenda 21 and referring

t l l d i l t th ti l b di i ld id f l



vary between geographic levels: what is sustainable at one level may not besustainable at another level.

11. The added value of the EU SDS compared to National SDS cannot be measured

yet. The EU SDS priorities have impacted the majority of national SD strategies;

however a fair number still focuses on national priorities. The impression arises

that many national SD policy initiatives would have been taken without an EU SDS

as well.

12. The relation between the EU SDS and the Structural Funds is controversial. In the

12 New Member States, vast investment programmes in infrastructure are on their

way. In Poland for instance, the Operational Programme for Infrastructure

represents an EU investment of € 27 billion for the period 2007-2013 – of which a

considerable part will be invested in roads. The impact on SD is uncertain – at

least. However, on a more positive note, Structural Funds are also used for

investing in environmental infrastructures, such as waste water treatment plans,while the Operational Programmes on Human Resources appear to be well aligned

with the EU SDS objective on social inclusion, demography and migration.

13. Impacting mainstream policies is the real challenge for the SDS. A real value

added of the EU SDS could be that it takes environmental (and social, economic)

priorities out of a silo and into the mainstream of national policy making. The

extent to which national and EU strategies are successful in this varies. For

instance, the EU SDS thus provides an excellent opportunity to analyse and

promote the integration of climate change and energy objectives in the policy areas

that may not already be fully aligned with the climate objectives. Examples of such

important policy areas include:

a. Cohesion and structural funding;

b. Trade policy;

c. Agriculture, CAP;

d. Research and technology development;e. Taxation, subsidies and other economic instruments;

f. External relations broadly speaking, including policies relating to security,

development assistance and energy supply.

14 I t ti l lit t SDS i f b t th l it f h ll



Recommendations

a. Need to establish a hierarchy of objectives; sustainable transport could well be

regarded as an intermediate objective and there is a need to structure and prioritise

these objectives much better. The number of objectives is currently very large,

especially when the cross-cutting themes are seen to have similar weight. This risk

of overstretching reduces the possible impact of the EU SDS; a streamlining of the

EU SDS is, therefore, needed from a logical perspective.

b. Internal cohesion within themes needs to be strengthened. Operational

objectives/targets often demonstrate overlap; a hierarchy between operational

objectives – sometimes logical – appears to be missing; this leads to a less than

optimal coherence. The inconsistencies within themes make reporting by Member

States as well as the assessment of MS reporting more difficult and are likely to

have contributed to gaps in MS reporting.

c. Increase the impact of the EU SDS on mainstream policies through impact

assessments. The cross-cutting nature of sustainable development provides a

valuable opportunity to address the mainstreaming of the various SD themes in EU

and national policies. More of the focus in EU SDS implementation could be

directed toward assessing and promoting integration of sustainable development

priorities in main strands of EU and MS policy such as agricultural policy,

structural and cohesion funds, and trade policy.

d. Strengthen links with the Lisbon Strategy, especially in areas where synergy exists.

For instance actions to promote labour market participation or the promotion of

environmental technologies are in line with both concepts and there would be

significant scope for strengthening these links and join forces.

e. Promote SD specifically in New Member States; national policies are often still

under development or review in the New MS and considerable investmentprogrammes are being taken forward; more inclusion of SD thinking and acting

could lead to significant impacts at the EU level. This is especially important in

the light of major EU-funded investment programmes that will help to modernise

the economic infrastructure – an opportunity to test these programmes and projects



1. Introduction

1.1 Background to the EU SDS

Sustainable development means that the needs of the present generation should be met

without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is an

overarching objective of the European Union set out in the Treaty, governing all the

Union’s policies and activities. It is about safeguarding the earth's capacity to support life

in all its diversity and is based on the principles of democracy, gender equality, solidarity,the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights, including freedom and equal

opportunities for all. It aims at the continuous improvement of the quality of life and

well-being on Earth for present and future generations. To that end it promotes a

dynamic economy with full employment and a high level of education, health protection,

social and territorial cohesion and environmental protection in a peaceful and secure

world, respecting cultural diversity5.

In 2001, the European Council in Göteborg adopted the first EU Sustainable

Development Strategy. This was complemented by an external dimension in 2002 by the

European Council in Barcelona in view of the World Summit on Sustainable

Development in Johannesburg (2002).

On 9th June 2006, the European Council approved the new EU Sustainable Development

Strategy (EU SDS)6. The main challenge of the current EU SDS is to gradually change

the current unsustainable consumption and production patterns and the non-integratedapproach to policy-making. The overall aim of the renewed EU SDS is to identify and

develop actions to enable the EU to achieve continuous improvement of quality of life

both for current and for future generations, through the creation of sustainable

communities able to manage and use resources efficiently and to tap the ecological and

social innovation potential of the economy ensuring prosperity environmental protection



The cross cutting policies are:1. Education and training;

2. Research and development;

3. Financing and Economic Instruments;

4. Communication, mobilising actors and multiplying success;

5. Implementation, monitoring and follow up.

The EU SDS requires the Commission to submit every two years (starting in September

2007) a progress report on implementation of the EU SDS in the EU and the Member

States also including future priorities, orientations and actions. The Member States and

DGs have been asked to report to the Commission's Secretariat General (D2) on the

progress made. The Commission’s Progress report consists of a political

Communication7 and a detailed staff working paper8 analysing progress in quantitative

and qualitative terms.

1.2 Aims of his report

This study is taken forward under the Framework Contract for Economic Analysis of

Environmental Policies and of Sustainable Development (COWI/ECORYS/Cambridge

Econometrics) and has been led by ECORYS Netherlands/Brussels, in close-cooperation

with COWI.

The aim of this study is to assist the Commission in producing the Communication and

the staff working paper which will address two key questions:

• What progress has been made by the EU and Member States in implementing the EU

SDS?

• Is the EU on track compared to the objectives set within the key themes and policies

of the strategy?

In each of the thematic areas, the study will therefore aim to address the followingquestions:

a. What are the key challenges facing the EU in this area and what are their relations?

b. Is there a clear view from the professional/academic community on the appropriate

policy response?



literature and draws on the expertise of thematic experts in each of the fields concerned.The study is complementary to the Progress Report prepared by Eurostat and the

Commission’s own analysis.

1.3 How the report has been prepared

The report has been prepared in close co-operation with the Commission services, in

order to make it as useful as possible as an input to the overall progress review.

The following steps have been executed:

1. Overall analysis of the EU SDS, including its internal and external coherence – we

have assessed the coherence of the EU SDS from a logical perspective by using a

problem and objective tree, and gathered general literature of relevance to the EU

SDS;

2. Preparation of thematic fiches – in each of the seven thematic areas, assignedexperts have prepared thematic fiches based on EU sources, the national progress

reports available and independent sources that are referred to in this report;

3. Organisation of a thematic workshop – all thematic experts participated in a

thematic workshop held in Brussels on 15th August 2007, where an overview of key

problems and key responses was discussed by theme, followed by a broader

assessment of overall progress and generation of interim conclusions. Templates for

the preparation of thematic chapters and tables were then developed and agreed; 4. Drafting of thematic chapters and tables - based on standardised templates and

taking into account the latest information from Member States, thematic experts then

prepared the basis for the assessment as well as detailed tables where national

progress by country and objective have been recorded.

5. Complementary analysis of cross-cutting SDS themes – subsequently the cross-

cutting themes have been analysed on the basis of the national progress reports

mostly;

6. Compilation of the interim report – an interim report prepared in September 2007focused on the assessment of the national progress reports and was used as input to

the Commission’s own progress report;

7. Compilation of draft final and final reports – the current report presents the key

findings of the study including the conclusions and recommendations.



of sophisticated indicators for measuring progress towards many themes andobjectives;

• No clear indicators and targets are defined in the EU SDS with regard to several

themes and objectives;

• Some objectives are unclear as to their linkages with others, i.e. how halving road

transport deaths by 2010 fits the objective to reduce levels of transport energy use;

• Evidence on effective measures is not always clear from either the academic or

policy literature. For example, does investing in costly waste treatment plants

generate better value-for-money than tackling waste generation at source?

1.4 About the structure of this report

This report is structured as follows. Chapters 2 to 8 will assess the progress in each of the

seven thematic areas: climate change and clean energy; sustainable transport; sustainable

consumption and production; conservation and management of natural resources; publichealth; social inclusion, demography and migration; and global poverty and sustainable

development challenges. Each of the chapters presents the main challenges in the area,

views on the appropriate policy response, EU action, Member state action and ends with

conclusions and recommendations.

Chapter 9 gives an overview of the progress in cross-cutting policies, namely: education

and training; research and development; financing and economic instruments;communication, mobilising actors and multiplying success; and governance of the

strategy.

Chapter 10 draws conclusions and devises recommendations. It summarises progress by

theme, the structure of the strategy, the monitoring of the SDS, the convergence of

national and EU SDS, cross-cutting themes and recommendations.

Annexes 1-8 comprise the overview of key policy initiatives by theme, objective andcountry.



2. Climate change and clean energy

Overall Objective from the EU SDS: To limit climate change and its costs and negative effects to society

and the environment

• Objective 1: Kyoto Protocol commitments of the EU-15 and most EU-25 to targets for reducing

greenhouse gas emissions by 2008 – 2012, whereby the EU-15 target is for an 8% reduction in

emissions compared to 1990 levels. Aiming for a global surface average temperature not to rise by

more than 2ºC compared to the pre-industrial level.• Objective 2: Energy policy should be consistent with the objectives of security of supply,

competitiveness and environmental sustainability, in the spirit of the Energy Policy for Europe

launched in March 2006 by the European Council. Energy policy is crucial when tackling the

challenge of climate change.

• Objective 3: Adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change should be integrated in all relevant

European policies.

• Objective 4: By 2010 12% of energy consumption, on average, and 21% of electricity consumption, as

a common but differentiated target, should be met by renewable sources, considering raising their

share to 15% by 2015.

• Objective 5: By 2010 5.75% of transport fuel should consist of biofuels, as an indicative target,

(Directive 2003/30/EC), considering raising their proportion to 8% by 2015.

• Objective 6: Reaching an overall saving of 9% of final energy consumption over 9 years until 2017 as

indicated by the Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services Directive.

Only few areas can claim that they have risen to the top of the policy agenda in such a

short time. In just one year time, climate change and clean energy have become a key

concern at both international, European, national, regional and local level. In this chapter

we will take stock of the progress that has been made in this area, which figures so

prominently in the EU SDS



progress towards the objectives/targets. Furthermore, not all objectives/targets havecorresponding actions attached to them9.

For the purposes of the assessment in this report, we have analytically considered each

individual item included in the objectives/targets as well as the actions of the SDS. As a

result of this process, we have subdivided three of the objectives/targets, while at the

same time trying to accommodate the issues addressed under the term "actions" in the EU

SDS under each of the resulting headings.

The following objectives/targets have thus been applied to the assessment of EU and

national progress in implementing the EU SDS:

Objective/target 1a Comply with Kyoto Commitments (through domestic measures,

EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and Joint Implementation

(JI) / Clean Development Mechanism (CDM))

Objective/target 1b Medium- and long-term EU emission reductions (post-2012)

consistent with 2ºC (including review and extension of EU ETS)Objective/target 1c Work toward an international framework post-2012 consistent

with 2ºC (reduction pathways by the group of developed

countries in the order of 15-30% by 2020 and beyond)

Objective/target 2a Energy policy consistent with competitiveness

Objective/target 2b Energy policy consistent with security of supply

Objective/target 2c Energy policy consistent with environmental sustainability (incl.

non-climate environmental impacts of energy)

Objective/target 3.a Mitigation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies (including e.g.

forestry, agriculture, cars, aviation, carbon capture and

sequestration, taxation)

Objective/target 3.b Adaptat ion integrated in all relevant (EU) policies.

Objective/target 4 Renewable Energy (including biomass). Targets for RenewableEnergy (12%) and Renewable Electricity (21%). Analysis of

long-term promotion of Renewable Energy Sources (RES),

consider new targets. Long-term strategy for bio-energy beyond

2010.

Obj ti /t t 5 P ti f Bi f l 5 75% f t t f l b 2010 A l i



2.2 Main challenges and problems facing the EU

a. A range of emerging challenges facing the EU

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published three volumes of

its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The Working Group 1 (WG1) report reinforces the

significance of man-made emissions to global climate change. The Working Group 2

(WG2) report confirms evidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional

climate changes, particularly temperature increases. The Working Group 3 (WG3) report

analyses mitigation options for the main sectors, including long-term mitigation strategies

for various stabilisation levels. These and many other studies confirm the major overall

climate-related challenges facing the EU:

• To make significant emission reductions in the near term and move onto a path of

very significant emission reductions in the period to 2050, global emissions of

greenhouse gases will need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and then be reduced to

very low levels, well below half of levels in 2000 by mid-century, if concentrations

are to be stabilised at safe levels.• To address adaptation to unavoidable climate change that will happen even in a

scenario limiting global climate change to the EU 2 degree target.

The recent Vienna conference under the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (UNFCCC) also confirmed that avoiding the most catastrophic forecasts

made by the IPCC would entail emission reductions in the range of 25-40% below 1990

levels by industrialised countries by 202010.

Aggregate projections from the European Environment Agency (EEA) show that the

EU15 is barely on track to meet its Kyoto commitments of 8% reduction by 2008-12.

The 2010 emissions of the EU15 are only expected to be 0.6 % below base-year levels

(i.e. a 7.4 % distance from the emission reduction commitment). Additional domestic

measures are projected to reduce the gap by a further 4.0 %, down to 3.4 % by 2010.

Kyoto mechanisms are expected to deliver an additional 2.6 % emission reductions and

the removal through sinks should provide the remaining 0.8 %. The developmentsconfirm that decoupling of energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions

from economic growth remains a major challenge.

With the approval of an Action Plan on an integrated energy and climate change package11



A major challenge now remains in terms of agreeing on the burden sharing among the EU27 countries when it comes to meeting the targets. In doing so, a large number of

national circumstances, interests and concerns as well as diverse policy regimes (e.g. with

regard to support schemes for deployment of Renewable Energy Technology (RET)) need

to meet under an umbrella covering all of the major elements of the climate/energy

package.

Ensuring that the significant increase in the use of biomass and biofuels is realised in a

sustainable way without compromising environmental and other sustainable development

concerns within the EU and in developing countries will be an important challenge.

While mitigation of climate change remains a major priority and challenge, adaptation to

the unavoidable climatic change that is already taking place now, in order to limit its

adverse effects on economies and natural systems is bound to take on a more prominent

position in the future. In the past, national initiatives in relation to adaptation have

dominated, but with its recent Green Paper on adaptation12

, the Commission isincreasingly devoting attention to this field.

A major challenge facing the EU are further negotiations on a global and comprehensive

post-2012 agreement building on the Kyoto Protocol. It is the EU's ambition that

negotiations should be completed by 2009. This takes place in a challenging context

where both the USA and developing economies, whose participation is vital to reach the

necessary emission reductions, remain reluctant to accept binding quantitative

commitments.

In a situation where impacts of climate change and the urgency of mitigation becomes

increasingly evident, mainstreaming of climate change concerns in broader foreign policy

is likely to be called for.

Security of supply is increasingly a concern which guides EU energy policies with import

dependency set to rise steadily over the coming decades.

Rising and volatile oil and gas prices are seen as a major challenge and a potential threat

to the economic development and competitiveness of Europe.

R h d d l t f t i bl t h l i dd t



The findings of Eurostat's "Measuring progress towards a more sustainable Europe2007"13 confirm this picture, stating that the evaluation of changes in the Climate Change

and Energy theme shows that there are no favourable changes to report compared to

2000. Key findings include the following:

• Following the considerable progress achieved in reducing greenhouse gas emissions

during the 1990s, and despite a significant reduction between 2004 and 2005, the

EU-15 trend has reversed and is now moving away from the target. In 2005, EU-15

emissions of greenhouse gases stood at 98% of their Kyoto base year value, while

EU-27 emissions were at 92.1% of their 1990 value. Overall greenhouse gas

emissions grew by 1.5 percentage points (EU-27) and 1.4 points (EU-15) between

2000 and 2005. Since 2000, the EU-15 emissions trend has thus been moving away

from the Kyoto target path.

• Gross inland energy consumption continues to grow. Since 2000, gross inland

energy consumption has grown at 1.1% per year for both EU-27 and EU-15,

growing considerable faster in EU-27 than in the previous decade, and reflecting

increasing energy demand. The switching from high-carbon solid fuels towards gasand renewables continues, but at a slower pace. The greenhouse gas intensity of

energy consumption is thus moving in the right direction, but progress is too slow to

make a major contribution.

• The rate of energy dependency continues steadily to increase. EU-27 dependence on

imported energy has increased every year since 2000, and in 2004 exceeded 50%,

ending up 5.7 percentage points higher in 2005 than in 2000. The energy

dependency of EU-15 is about 3 percentage points higher than that of EU-27.

• The share of renewables in primary energy consumption is increasing, although at a

rate so slow that the distance from the target path is widening each year. The EU-27

consumption of renewable energy sources increased at the significant average rate of

4.1% between 2000 and 2005. Nevertheless, due to the relatively high growth rate

of energy consumption over recent years, the share of renewables has increased by

only 0.17 percentage points per year since 2000, reaching a level of 6.6% in 2005,

far from the 2010 target of 12%.

• Little, if any, progress has been made in increasing the share of renewables inelectricity consumption. Progress in the share of renewables in electricity

consumption has slowed down since 2000, growing at an average of 0.04 percentage

points per year compared with 0.14 during the previous decade. This leaves a gap of

7 percentage points between the level of 14% in 2005 and the 2010 target of 21%.

A hi i th t t ill i th f 1 4 t i t



•

Emissions due to international bunkers, which are not covered by the KyotoProtocol, account for a small but rapidly growing proportion of greenhouse gas

emissions, equivalent to 5.6% of the total in 2005 in EU-27, compared with 6.6% for

EU-15. Their share has increased significantly since 1990, from 1.2% to 2.4% for

aviation and from 1.9% to 3.1% for shipping.

b. Key problems and their interconnections

Objective/target 1a: Comply with Kyoto Commitments

Several EU15 countries are facing difficulties in bringing emissions pathways in line with

Kyoto targets. Many have been forced to introduce strong additional measures to limit

emissions, and the first period of EU ETS did not contribute strongly to emission

reductions. However, EU-15 countries are expected to comply with the commitments,

and most of EU12 have little problems in this regard due to steep emission reductions

since the base year 1990.

Objective/target 1b: Medium- and long-term EU emission reductions (post-2012)consistent with 2ºC

Current energy and transport policies would mean EU CO2 emissions would increase by

around 5% by 2030. This is clearly not sustainable in view of the need for developed

country GHG emissions to be reduced by at least 20-30% (as per the decision of the

European Council) or even 25-40% by 2020 (a figure around which there is growing

consensus, cf. the recent Vienna meeting of the UNFCCC).

Objective/target 1c: Work toward an international framework post-2012 consistent with

2ºC

Keeping the long-term objective of 2ºC within reach will require global greenhouse gas

emissions to peak within 10-20 years, followed by substantial reductions perhaps by as

much as 50% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. Developed country emissions would

have to decrease by as much as 80-95% to keep CO2eq concentrations at compatible

levels. Such drastic emission reductions will require that a strong international

framework is established for the period after 2012.

Objective/target 2a: Energy policy consistent with competitiveness

Energy price volatility and price rises are issues already affecting EU economies today,

and could do so even more in the future with continuing growth in global demand

bi d ith ti d t ti f l



With existing air pollution legislation, the health effects would mean a loss of lifeexpectancy of around 5.5 months, and ground-level ozone would be causing some 21,000

premature deaths in the EU by 2020 at a cost ranging from € 162bn to € 587bn.

Objective/target 3a: Mitigation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies

Mainstreaming climate and energy policies in all relevant policies and sectors is a major

challenge. The EU ETS provides a powerful instrument for influencing developments

and emissions pathways in the sectors covered. Policies and measures in several other

sectors are also important from a climate perspective. These include agriculture, land-

use, waste, and industrial GHGs. The most difficult sector to handle from an emission

mitigation perspective has been the transport sector with continuously growing emissions

from road, marine and air transport. Integration of short, medium, and long term climate

and energy concerns is also a challenge in cross-cutting policy areas such as Research and

Technological Development (RTD) and cohesion policy. Also trade policy, international

development cooperation and other aspects of general foreign policy have been identified

as increasingly relevant policy areas to include in a comprehensive approach to climatechange14.

Objective/target 3b: Adaptation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies.

All countries will need to take measures to adapt to climate change in order to lessen the

adverse impacts of global warming on people, the economy and the environment.

As explained in the Green Paper on adaptation, Northern countries are already

experiencing higher rainfall while those in the South struggle to cope with more frequent

droughts. Up to half of Europe’s plant species could face extinction by 2080. Economic

actors in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and tourism will

be directly impacted, and so will infrastructure in transport, public utilities and power

production.

Integration of adaptation in development cooperation is receiving increasing attention

because developing countries are relatively more exposed to the bulk of climate changeimpacts and have least adaptive capacity to deal with it. Furthermore, adaptation plays an

important part in the international climate negotiations. A recent assessment by the

OECD of the experience with integrating adaptation into development cooperation15

concluded that while there is increasing awareness and high-level policy endorsement

ithi d i f th d t i t t d t ti ff t d d ith



•

Certification of biofuels is useful for promoting good practices but cannot be trustedas a safeguard;

• Current biofuel support policies place a significant bet on a single technology

despite the existence of a wide variety of different fuels and power trains that may

be options for the future.

The question of how biomass is used best in the energy system, i.e. for power/heat

production or transport is also continuously being raised.

Objective/target 6: Energy efficiency in supply and demand.

Europe continues to waste at least 20% of its energy due to inefficiency 20, thereby

undermining efforts to improve security of supply, competitiveness and GHG emissions.

In 2006, measures aiming at reducing energy use by 20% by 2020 were adopted21. This

will require significant efforts both in terms of behavioural change and additional

investment. Among the barriers to the realisation of the potential are legal and financialbarriers; lack of internalisation of external costs in current tariff structures and pricing

policies where a strong incentive to use less energy is missing.

c. Problems that are receiving less attention overall

Adaptation

Adaptation to climate change has for many years received little attention compared to

mitigation of emissions in the EU. Most activities have taken place at the level of

Member States. The EU level is now starting to address the issue with the above-

mentioned Green Paper on Adaptation to Climate Change.

Integration of mitigation in all policies

The integration of mitigation in all policies is part of the EU SDS objectives, but it is not

followed up by concrete measures to ensure that this is not always taking place in

practice. Areas where emissions appear not to be addressed strongly and systematically

are cohesion and structural policy; trade policy; and agricultural policy. It is expectedthat a White Paper on the issue will need to address these links.

Bunker emissions

Emissions from transport are recognised as a major challenge and are behind initiatives

h bi f l i d t t d th i l i f i ti i th EU ETS GHG



early 2008, the Commission will have made proposals for a wide range of key measuresguiding the development of EU climate and energy policies toward 2020. Therefore, the

elements of this climate and energy package will necessarily be central elements of the

"latest developments in EU Action" although much of the action is only in the final

planning stages.

Objective/target 1a: Comply with Kyoto Commitments

Overall, the EEA has concluded that the EU countries collectively are on track to reach

the Kyoto target. The Commission as part of the approval of National Allocation Plansunder the EU ETS assesses the national plans for achieving compliance with the Kyoto

commitments.

Compliance with the EU commitments under the Kyoto protocol by individual countries

and jointly (for EU15 under the burden sharing umbrella) is handled through three

categories of measures: 1) The EU ETS; 2) Emission reductions in the sectors not

covered by the EU ETS; and 3) The use of flexible Kyoto mechanisms.

Credits generated through the Kyoto mechanisms (JI and CDM) are relied upon to

provide a substantial contribution to the achievement of the Kyoto commitment of several

EU countries, subject to the criterion that such reductions must be supplementary to

domestic action.

The EU ETS is a key instrument in ensuring compliance with the Kyoto commitments. It

is seen as a groundbreaking innovation providing a mechanism for cost-effective

emission reductions across the EU, and with a potential for future expansion through

linkages with non-EU countries.

The effectiveness of the EU ETS in reducing emissions depends on the scarcity of

allowances created during the allocation process. The Commission has therefore adopted

a stringent approach to approving National Allocation Plans for the period 2008-12,

which has led seven New Member States to file lawsuits against the Commission.

In the ongoing review process of the EU ETS, a number of key issues relating to the

future effectiveness are addressed, including harmonisation of allocation methodologies

and ensuring incentives to invest in low-carbon technologies. The currently applied free

ll ti f ll b d df th i i ll d t h b f



UNFCCC has experienced a number of irregularities which question whether thereductions achieved through a number of these projects are real and additional23.

Objective/target 1b: Medium- and long-term EU emission reductions (post-2012)

consistent with 2ºC

There is general agreement that in order to have a good chance of achieving the 2ºC

global target, developed countries including the EU will have to make significant

emission reductions by 2020.

Against this background, the European Council has approved an Action Plan with a

comprehensive package including the following elements:

• EU has committed unilaterally to reducing GHG emissions by 20% in 2020

compared to 1990 levels and to reducing by 30% as part of an international

agreement;

• A binding target for 20% renewable energy by 2020;

•

A minimum share of 10% biofuels by 2020;• A European Strategic Energy Technology Plan.

The sufficiency of the GHG target has been questioned recently by the Swedish

Government's Scientific Council on Climate Issues. The Scientific council on climate

issues says emissions must be cut by up to 40 % compared to 1990 levels 24. Similarly,

the Council says EU emissions will have to be cut by up to 90 % by 2050. During the

recent UNFCCC meeting in Vienna, there was consensus that developed country

emissions reductions in the order of 25-40 % were warranted, also higher than the 20-30% commitment of the European Council.

There is widespread consensus that in order to achieve ambitious targets in a cost-

effective way, the use of market-based instruments is central, providing price signals and

a predictable framework under which to undertake investments, both within the EU and

internationally (for example through JI and CDM).

There is also consensus that policy measures promoting research, development and

demonstration of low- or zero-emission technologies are key to cost-effective emission

reductions and to bringing the EU onto a path towards very large emission reductions

toward 2050.



Objective/target 1c: Work toward an international framework post-2012 consistent with2ºC

Bringing about a post-2012 climate regime is a top priority in the EU's international

relations. International action against climate change post 2012 is high on the

international policy agenda of the EU, as it is generally recognized that in order to bring

global emissions onto more sustainable pathways, countries like USA and Australia as

well as major developing country emitters including China, India, Brazil and others must

be included in a future regime. The EU benefits increasingly from businesses, who are

asking for a stable and coherent framework with clear price signals to guide investmentdecisions.


The main elements of the EU approach to ensure energy-related competitiveness are:

• Using the Internal Energy Market to ensure competitive energy prices, energy

savings and incentives for investments;

•

Boosting investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency, thus strengtheningthe EU's position in global markets for low carbon technologies;

• Security of supply.

With regard to the Internal Energy Market, some Member States, notably France and

Germany, question whether further liberalisation must also include ownership

unbundling, arguing that this may actually undermine energy security and drive up prices

for consumers26.

Competitiveness issues are continuously being highlighted in connection with the energy

and climate policies, in particular with regard to the possible effects of the EU ETS,

where energy intensive industries both inside the ETS and outside but still affected by the

price effects, are making the case that the ETS will lead to a loss in competitiveness in

some industries. Studies show that often this effect is rather limited 27.

Objective/target 2b: Energy policy consistent with security of supplySecurity of supply is addressed in the following main ways:

• By promoting energy efficiency which has the potential to reduce energy demand

(20% compared to the baseline by 2020);

• By promoting development and deployment of renewable energy technologies that

t d d t i t f



SO2 from energy, and emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) fromagriculture and other sectors.

However, on the particular issue of biomass and biofuels, there are widely diverging

opinions on their performance in relation to environmental sustainability.

The Commission has performed a public consultation exercise which addressed the

design of a biofuel sustainability system and effects on land-use.

A joint contribution from the United Nations28 to the public consultation on biofuelsemphasises the need to build a biofuel sustainability system on principles and criteria

covering a range of not only environmental aspects of sustainability. These include

carbon stock conservation, biodiversity conservation, sustainable water use, air quality,

labour conditions, minimal impact on food prices / minimal competition with food

production, increased livelihoods of local populations and minimal displacement.

Among the challenges raised is the fact that a number of developing countries that havethe potential to produce biofuels are also food insecure, creating risks of land-use choices

that prioritise financial aspects over food needs. There is thus a real risk, for example, of

food crops being displaced to high biodiversity areas without any control mechanisms

being applied.

With regard to nuclear energy, environmental sustainability issues relate to nuclear safety,

disposal of radioactive waste and decommissioning. As set out in the Nuclear Illustrative

Programme29, the reliance or not on nuclear energy remains the domain of MemberStates, but EU work should contribute to ensuring high standards of safety and security.

Objective/target 3a: Mitigation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies

Carbon Capture and Storage:

The Commission has identified two major tasks for deployment of Carbon Capture and

Geological Storage (CCS):

1. Developing an enabling legal framework and economic incentives for CCS withinthe EU;

2. Encouraging a network of up to 12 demonstration plants across Europe and in key

third countries by 2015.

A key sustainability focus of the framework is on ensuring that CO2 is stored in safe sites

th t l itt d h th i t l i t h b d d



Transport The EU aims at addressing the unsustainable development in emissions from the transport

sector in several ways (in addition to biofuels):

• By accelerating the use of fuel efficient vehicles for transport by requiring cuts in

CO2 emissions by the car industry;

• By making better use of public transport;

• By ensuring that the true costs of transport are faced by consumers, e.g. by including

aviation in the EU ETS.

Cars account for roughly 20% of total European CO2 emissions. The existing policy

measures for reducing emissions from road transport have been clearly inadequate, as

European carmakers are failing to deliver the lower carbon emissions they pledged to the

European Commission in a voluntary agreement in 1998.

The EU now aims at putting regulation in place that will enable the EU to reach its long-

established objective of limiting average CO2 emissions from new cars to 120 grams perkm by 2012. The Commission in February announced (endorsed by the Environment

Council in June) to propose new binding legislation that would compel vehicle

manufacturers to cut average emissions from new cars from the current 162g/km to

130g/km by 2012 through technical improvements. Other players, including tyre-makers,

fuel suppliers, repairers, drivers and public authorities, would contribute to a further

10g/km.

Research and Technology Development A number of structural weaknesses in the energy research and innovation system have

been identified31:

• Scattered and un-coordinated market incentives (e.g. innovation programmes);

• Reduction of Energy research funds, which have been reduced significantly since the

1980s;

• Scattered, fragmented and sub-critical research and innovation capacities;

•

Strong international competition and weak cooperation.

As a response, annual spending on energy at EU level will increase by 50% through the

7th Framework Research Programme. Despite this increase, resources are still likely to be

too limited and the recently-launched European Strategic Energy Technology Plan32 will

d t dd thi i R h li i till t d t ti l l l d th



2) Possible measures to address the competitive effects of imports from countries not

being subject to GHG emission constraints on EU industries, e.g. through the

adoption of a "Kyoto border tax".

It has been argued from the academic side that such a border tax adjustment may be

compatible with WTO rules33.

Cohesion and structural policy

The sustainability of the Structural and Cohesion funding has been questioned by NGOs

recently, who claim that EU funds have subsidised an energy-intensive type of development and the danger is that the same pattern will be repeated in the New Member

States in the 2007-2013 period34. According to them, EU funds could play a positive role

in the fight against climate change if systematically directed towards energy efficiency,

renewable energy and low-emission transport, which, it is claimed, is not happening.

According to the study, only 1% of funds are allocated to energy efficiency and

renewable energy, respectively in the draft Operational Programmes.

While most of the New Member States are not having problems with reaching theirKyoto target, investments in emission-intensive infrastructure may lock in the countries

on unsustainable pathways and limit the potential to contribute to the large-scale emission

reductions necessary post-2012.

Poland, which is highlighted as a case in point, in its own EU SDS reporting mentions the

growth in emissions that is catalysed, inter alia, by the resources of the Cohesion Fund

and Structural Funds of the EU.

Objective/target 3b Adaptation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies.

The above-mentioned Green Paper on adaptation35 reflects the fact that most action on

adaptation has in the past been taken by Member States. It does not contain very specific

policy measures, but rather opens a debate over what the EU should do to help countries

adapt. Four lines of priority actions are presented:

• Development of adaptation strategies

•

Integrating global adaptation needs into the EU’s external relations• Filling knowledge gaps through EU-level research and exchange of information;

• Setting up a European advisory group on adaptation to climate change to analyse

coordinated strategies and actions.

St k h ld h ll d f ti t th t f EU b di



Objective/target 4: Renewable Energy

As part of the climate and energy package, the Commission is expected to put forward in

early 2008:

• A proposal for a comprehensive 'framework directive' on renewable energies

including an update of the biofuels directive and a review on the need for

harmonisation of national support schemes for renewable electricity;

• A proposal to revise the EU-ETS for the period after 2012;

The above-mentioned Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) has been adopted in

November 2007.

While some stakeholders have demanded more ambitious targets, Business Europe, the

confederation of European business, has questioned the EU's target of achieving a 20%

share of renewables in the EU's energy mix by 2020, as agreed during the European

Council of 8-9 March. It considers the target unreachable and cites industry concerns

about the security of energy supply37. However, comprehensive analyses have been

carried out of the potential and costs of achieving a large-scale penetration of RE

38

.

One of the concerns raised is the absence of a proposal on renewable heating and cooling.

Using renewables for heating and cooling has a large potential, but there is a lack of

policy measures to support this.

Objective/target 5: Promotion of Biofuels.

The binding minimum 10% biofuel target by 2020 is explicitly made "subject to

production being sustainable" and to "second-generation biofuels becoming commerciallyavailable". This conditionality reflects the concerns regarding the above-mentioned

environmental and social impact of a surge in energy crops.


In 2006, measures aiming at reducing energy use by 20% by 2020 were adopted39. This

will require significant efforts both in terms of behavioural change and additional

investment. Among the barriers to the realisation of the potential are legal and financialbarriers, lack of internalisation of external costs in current tariff structures and pricing

policies, where a strong incentive to use less energy is missing.

IEA/OECD40 has highlighted the fact that improvements in energy efficiency have

d li d i t d tl b t h lf th t f i t i th



households. While cars are now using fuel more efficiently, the gains have largely been

eroded by increased congestion and changes in driver behaviour, such as more frequent

journeys. Energy efficiency measures have produced clearer effects in manufacturing

industries.

2.4 Member State action

Explanation of symbols used

♦ = limited/poor coverage (< 10 countries)

♦♦ = medium coverage (about 10-20 countries)

♦♦♦ = good coverage (> 20 countries)

This section systematically examines the individual objectives with a view to answering

the following questions:

1. What are the latest developments in MS action to tackle the challenge/problem?2. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?

The assessment is based on an analysis of the MS submissions on the progress of EU

SDS implementation as reflected in the overview table in Annex 1.

Objective 1: Comply with Kyoto Commitments ( ♦♦♦ ), long-term reductions and

international framework consistent with 2ºC ( ♦ ) For most New Member States, compliance with the Kyoto Protocol commitments is

ensured through the dramatic decrease in emissions following economic transition

(Slovenia is an exception; its current emissions are above the Kyoto target). Subsequent

economic growth has led to increasing emissions in recent years, and the emissions

intensity of most new Member States remains high.

In response to the European Commission's position, several of the EU15 countries

(including Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) have had to plansignificant additional policies and measures in order to bring emissions in line with the

EU15 burden sharing agreement. In addition to domestic emission reductions, Kyoto

mechanisms are relied upon to help comply with the individual and collective

commitments. The developments confirm that decoupling of energy consumption and



countries are very active in the post-2012 negotiation process. It could be interpreted as

an indication that Member States do not regard this issue as being part of their national

obligation in relation to the EU SDS.

Objective 2: Energy policy consistent with security of supply, competitiveness and

environmental sustainability ( ♦ )

Very few Member States address the issue of energy policy and its consistency with

security of supply in their reporting. Bulgaria explicitly states that reducing import

dependency from Russia is a priority. To Estonia, a development plan for biomass andbiofuels serves the purpose of reducing import dependency.

Equally limited reporting can be noticed on energy policy and its consistency with

competitiveness policies. A handful of countries report on restructuring of the energy

sector, including liberalisation of electricity and gas markets as well as expansion of

infrastructure such as transmission systems. The remaining Member States do not

address the issue explicitly.

Apart from the GHG emissions, which are addressed by all countries under Objective 1,

there are other relevant elements of environmental sustainability such as airborne

emissions of SO2, NOX, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), issues related to

nuclear energy and environmental sustainability in connection with the production of

biomass and biofuels. Few countries (Czech, Estonia, Spain) refer to the linkage to air

quality as a priority issue, whereas others do not address these issues at all.

Objective 3: Integration of climate change mitigation and adaptation in all relevant EU

policies ( ♦♦ )

Different countries report various types of policies in relation to mitigation being

integrated in all relevant (EU) policies. Austria and Ireland emphasise innovation in the

transport sector; the Czech Republic cites environmental tax reform; Finland makes

mention of a climate change awareness campaign; France refers to carbon neutral

investment projects; Germany mentions CO2 compensation of government travel;Slovakia and Spain put forward agriculture and carbon sinks. Several countries are

planning "fiscal greening", e.g. by reforming car taxation. The UK points to plans for

Carbon Capture and Storage.

S l t i i i t f d ti i ti li t h t t i



Adaptation plays a very limited role in national reporting. Denmark, France, Spain and

Romania mention recent national adaptation strategies in different stages of development.

Other countries (such as UK, Finland) are known to have carried out extensive work on

adaptation but have not reported on this.

Objective 4: Renewable Energy including biomass ( ♦♦♦ )

Renewable energy is at the centre stage of the EU SDS reporting of most countries. Most

of the Member States relate national targets to the overall targets of the EU of 21%

renewable electricity and a 12 % share of renewable energy in primary energyconsumption by 2010.

Reporting confirms the vast differences in the role that renewable energy is playing

currently, reflecting different national circumstances. Countries have widely differing

targets under the umbrella of 21% for the EU27, ranging from Hungary's 3.6% to

Austria's 78%. Nine countries are on track to meet their national renewable electricity

targets of 21% for 2010: Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxemburg,

Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands. Germany has shown strong growth in the

renewable share of both electricity and primary energy, doubling both from 2000 to 2006.

Portugal has even revised its target share for renewable electricity upward from 39% to

45%. The remaining countries are lagging behind to various degrees, although virtually

all countries report that support schemes are in place or are being strengthened. Malta

still has virtually zero renewable electricity penetration despite a 5% target, but is

alluding to a possible wind farm development.

The priority energy sources are wind, hydro, and biomass, the latter often being supported

as part of rural development programmes.

Several countries refer to support from Structural Funds as a source of funding for

promoting renewable energy. Confirming the known limitations in the penetration of

renewable heating, only a few countries are reporting on specific initiatives to support

this subsector either via solar or biomass. The support schemes applied differ withtradable green certificates and special feed-in tariffs for renewable electricity being the

two main categories. In addition, investment support schemes and preferential tax

treatment are used. Several countries also report activities to remove administrative

barriers to renewable energy, e.g. in connection with planning and approval of projects.



Kyoto compliance is less of an issue due to the economic restructuring since 1990 but

concerns exist about the impact of new large-scale infrastructure investments.

Objective/target 1b: Medium- and long-term EU emission reductions (post-2012)

consistent with 2ºC

The EU has taken significant steps with the climate and energy package agreed in March

2007 including quantitative targets for CO2 emissions, renewable energy, biofuels, as

well as energy efficiency. The spelling out and operationalisation of the decisions remain

a challenge. Several EU-15 countries are establishing ambitious national targets for GHGemissions and renewable energy. New MS are less proactive with regard to future

emission reductions and seem to focus more on ensuring that they are not restricted in

achieving strong economic growth.

Objective/target 1c: Work toward an international fr amework post-2012 consistent with

2ºC

The EU is playing a leading role in international policies regarding post-2012. Unilateral

GHG commitments and a push for an international post-Kyoto agreement are part of this.

Virtually no MS report on activities in this field.


The EU is intent on reaping the potential competitiveness benefits from technology

development within renewable energy and energy efficiency. The approach includes

specific programmes focusing on energy technology. A second leg consists of

liberalising and promoting competition on energy markets.

Objective/target 2b: Energy policy consistent with security of supply

Renewable energy and energy efficiency targets are major tools in increasing security of

supply. In addition, measures are taken to improve the framework for cooperation with

third countries, in particular energy suppliers.

Objective/target 2c: Energy policy consistent with environmental sustainabilityAt the EU level, several policy measures address environmental aspects of energy supply

and consumption, including e.g. the Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution.

National reporting on this issue is virtually absent.

Obj ti /t t 3 Miti ti i t t d i ll l t (EU) li i



Objective/target 3.b: Adaptation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies.

Climate adaptation work at the EU level is still at an early stage. Most concrete

adaptation work has so far been undertaken at the level of Member States, with different

levels of ambition and efforts. Very limited country reporting has been made on this.

Objective/target 4: Renewable Energy

The EU as a whole as well as most Member States are lagging behind the EU and

national objectives with regard to the share of renewable energy and renewable

electricity. At the same time, the European Council has committed to a strong growth inrenewable energy by 2020, with negotiations about the implementation of these targets

ongoing.

Objective/target 5: Promotion of Biofuels

As for renewable energy, the development of biofuels is lagging behind EU targets in

Member States, but at the same time ambitious targets for the future are being established

(10% by 2020). This objective is subject to sustainability concerns being addressed with

regard to the way biofuels are produced, and these concerns are not easily addressed.


The rate of energy efficiency improvement has deteriorated significantly over the past

years. Similar to renewable energy, the recent climate and energy initiatives of the EU

aim to set more ambitious targets and provide the means for implementation in the next

decade. However, implementation of policy measures relies heavily on Member States.

b. Suggestions to restructure/adjust the objective tree

Many countries have not reported systematically on all of the objectives and targets that

are covered in the EU SDS. This may partly be explained by the way these are structured

and phrased, e.g. where there are several issues covered under one item. For example,

most countries write nothing or very little about adaptation to climate change. Equally,

most countries report nothing or very little about non-climate environmental aspects of

energy.

As mentioned in the introduction, there are a number of overlaps and imperfections in the

internal coherence within and between the individual objectives/targets. In several cases,

very different issues and levels of action are included in one objective/target, making it a

l t k t d t k t ti t f t d th



development issues and their interrelationships in one process and under one umbrella.

This raises the question how the EU SDS can provide more added value to the process of

achieving the overall objective under the theme.

A proposal in this regard would be to make use of the cross-cutting perspective of

sustainable development to focus activities under the climate and energy theme on

mainstreaming of climate change in all policies. The EU SDS thus provides an excellent

opportunity to analyse and promote the integration of climate change and energy

objectives in the policy areas that may not already be fully aligned with the climateobjectives. Examples of such important policy areas include:

• Cohesion and structural funding;

• Trade policy;

• Agriculture, CAP;

• Research and technology development;

• Taxation, subsidies and other economic instruments;

• External relations broadly speaking, including policies relating to security

development assistance and energy supply.

A logical part of such a focus would be to develop and apply various tools such as

indicators and impact assessment methodologies that analyze and monitor the

performance of different policies and programmes in terms of their integration of climate

change concerns.

A radical implementation of this approach would be to do away with the long list of objectives, many of which derive from policy decisions in other processes, and focus on

the mainstreaming of climate change concerns, essentially focusing on the two objectives:

• Climate change mitigation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies;

• Climate change adaptation integrated in all relevant (EU) policies.



3. Sustainable transport

Overall Objective: To ensure that our transport systems meet society’s economic, social and

environmental needs whilst minimising their undesirable impacts on the economy, society and the

environment

• Objective 1: Decoupling economic growth and the demand for transport with the aim of reducing

environmental impacts.

• Objective 2: Achieving sustainable levels of transport energy use and reducing transport greenhouse

gas emissions.

• Objective 3: Reducing pollutant emissions from transport to levels that minimise effects on human

health and/or the environment.

• Objective 4: Achieving a balanced shift towards environment friendly transport modes to bring about

a sustainable transport and mobility system.

• Objective 5: Reducing transport noise both at source and through mitigation measures to ensure

overall exposure levels minimise impacts on health.

•

Objective 6: Modernising the EU framework for public passenger transport services to encouragebetter efficiency and performance by 2010.

• Objective 7: In line with the EU strategy on CO2 emissions from light duty vehicles, the average new

car fleet should achieve CO2 emissions of 140g/km (2008/09) and 120g/km (2012).

• Objective 8 Halving road transport deaths by 2010 compared to 2000.

The single biggest challenge facing policy makers in the area of sustainable transport is

how to reconcile the economic and environmental priorities of transport. The transport

sector consumes 70% of all petrol consumed in the EU and produces 21% of all

greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, it is well recognised that transport is the

very life blood of a modern economy and its effects go far beyond the direct economic

effects of the employment and added value of the transport sector in an economy



It is often argued that this growth is necessary for Europe to remain competitive. This

assertion is not supported by observation since the five most competitive economies in the

EU (Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K.) are also the countries with

the lowest transport-intensity per 1000 € of GDP41.

Getting the prices right

The efficient functioning of markets is contingent on the ability to get prices right. There

are two problems with prices in the transport sector. First, the transport sector benefitsfrom annual subsidies estimated to be between € 270 – 290 billion. These subsidies

distort the price signal, and hence the efficient functioning of transport markets leading to

over/under consumption of transport goods and services. Second, the transport sector

imposes external costs estimated to be around € 650 billion annually. Prices in the

transport sector, therefore, do not adequately reflect the external costs of transport42.

Stimulating technological innovations and their adoptions to improve the performance of

the road transport sector vis-à-vis emissions and energy consumption

The road transport sector is dominant for both freight and passenger transport. The

volume of road transport is also expected to continue to grow. Given the dominance and

expected growth of road transport, it becomes essential to reduce GHG emissions and

improve energy use of the EU’s car and truck fleet43.

Meeting the mobility needs of the urban population

80% of Europe’s population lives in urban areas, thus meeting their mobility needs isessential. However, most cities have severe traffic congestion and suffer from the

accompanying environmental problems. Meeting the transport needs of the urban

population accounts for 40% of all CO2 emissions from road transport emissions and 70%

of other emissions44.

Meeting the future demand for air transport in Europe while minimizing its environmental

impacts

Demand for air transport is expected to double by 2020. The current capacity of the

airport and air traffic control infrastructure is inadequate for accommodating this demand.

Meeting future demand for air transport is also going to pose challenges with regards to

the safety of air transport45.



Security of public transport has two dimensions, the perception of security of passengers,

and security to prevent terrorist acts. While actions have been taken to prevent the latter,

little is done to improve perceptions of security of users of public transport.

Although most objectives aim for developments in a similar direction, this is not always

the case. For instance the drive towards ever safer cars – needed to live up to the aim to

cut the number of transport deaths by half in 2010 – has led to an increase in the weight of

cars, with an increase in fuel consumption as a consequence48. Similarly, the objective to

reduce fuel consumption has contributed to the popularity of diesel-fuelled passenger carsin various Member States (e.g. France and Belgium, where over half of the passenger cars

are diesel-powered). However, this trend does not necessarily help to reduce pollutant

emissions – especially those of carcinogen particles – at least until the introduction of

obligatory particle filters (planned at the EU-level for the year 2009 only).

c. Which problems are receiving less attention overall?

It would be fair to say that in the last years policymakers have given less attention to the

environmental and social aspects of transport.

Cycling and walking do not receive enough attention as serious modes of transport in

urban areas.

The integration of land-use planning and transport planning can be improved, as this is a

domain which is closely related to the daily mobility patterns of European citizens.

Urban sprawl – a consequence of continuous suburbanisation – contributes to lesseffective public transport systems, increased utilisation of the car, cross-commuting and

increased congestion overall.

While transport policy pays a great deal of attention to provision of infrastructure and

stimulating technological innovation etc., it does not devote much attention to the

behavioural aspects of transport choices made by individuals.

Little systematic research has been carried out on the transport implications of ageing

urban populations.

There is an acute lack of data on which to base transport policy and this problem is not

ll i d b i bl b t t li k



One mechanism regarded as effective in managing the demand for travel and transport is

the price mechanism. There are several broad areas of agreement as to what is needed in

order to facilitate the functioning of market forces in the transport sector.

All transport modes receive subsidies; the difference is in the extent of subsidy and

whether it is an overt subsidy or a hidden subsidy. These subsidies distort the price signal

and interfere with the functioning of the markets. These distortions lead to consumers

making choices different from what they would have made if the different transportmodes did not receive a subsidy. Thus, most transport planners and economists agree on

the need to eliminate the subsidies received by the transport sector. Public transport is an

exception to this rule, as it generates important and positive socio-economic and

environmental externalities that are otherwise not captured.

A second area of widespread agreement is regarding the need to reflect the external costs

of transport and transport related activities in the price of transport services and products.

Thus, the costs of environmental damage resulting from harmful emissions, the effects of

emissions and noise on human health and welfare, the cost of accidents to society all need

to be reflected in the prices charged/paid by supplier/consumers of transport services and

products.

While there is not an established consensus about what is the most appropriate

mechanism for doing the above, there is general agreement on the “polluter pays”

principle. The polluter pays principle simply states that those who are responsible forpollution (or imposing external costs) must also pay for remedying the harmful effects of

pollution. The application of this principle has resulted in, for example, a policy debate

in the Netherlands to replace the current tax on car-ownership with a tax on car-use.

There is general agreement on the appropriateness and effectiveness of using the pricing

mechanism for rationing scarce capacity of transport infrastructure. Thus, there are

several examples of European cities choosing to implement some sort of a charge for

using the road network within a city.

Transport planners and economists also agree on the central role of technology in creating

a win-win situation (high mobility without the harmful side effects) and solving the

t t t d t ffi bl Alth h th h b l t f di i d



Innovation

• The 7th Framework Programme for research and technological development hasprioritised a programme on cooperation activities on transport, intended to developintegrated, safer, greener and smarter pan-European transport systems;

• Freight transport logistics strategy & broad debate on possible EU action (2006),definition of action plan for logistics (2007);

• Galileo: identification of possible future applications (2006), start of concession in2009;

• Launch of major programme to bring intelligent road transport systems to the market

(2008);• Implementation of ERTMS in certain corridors in 2009;• RTD and support to dissemination, exploitation and market penetration of new

technologies.

International dimension• Better representation of EU interests in international organisations – IMO, ICAO

(2006); possible membership in relevant international organisations (2009);•

Strategy for integrating the EU’s neighbouring countries into the internal transportmarket (2007);

• Develop external relations through bilateral agreements and in multilateral for a,deploy a common aviation area in Europe.

b. Main concerns about the effectiveness of EU action

Implementation of EU directives is slow, and even when the directives are implemented

they do not always have the intended results. A good example of this limited

effectiveness is provided by the railway sector in Europe. The European Commissionhas had to take several governments to court because they were not complying with the

directive concerning the liberalisation of freight transport – aiming to improve the

competitiveness of rail compared to other modalities. Even where directives have been

implemented, the level of competition between operators is slow to increase, with often

little impact on the competitiveness of rail cargo. Clearly, there is no 'one size fits all' as

the scope for rail cargo overall such as in Ireland or Greece is limited by definition.

Much scope for improvement exists in the urban transport sector. Until now, the EU has

not played a large or direct role and most active in this area are cities themselves.

However, the Commission has stepped up its involvement and issued in September 2007

a Green Paper "Towards a new culture for urban mobility49. The Green Paper states that



However, it would be worth looking at the impact of new legislation issued in the past by

the State of California that required all new cars sold to meet very stringent emission

standards. As a result of these requirements, car manufacturers did not sell fewer cars,

they sold as many cars, all of which were a lot less polluting, and air quality improved

dramatically. Thus, a good case could be made for the EU taking a pioneering role and

setting the directions for improving the performance of the transport system. Recent

initiatives demonstrate that the EU is increasingly adhering to this line of thinking.








1. What are the latest developments in MS Action to tackle the challenge?

2. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?



a. Progress by objective

Objective 1: Decoupling economic growth from demand for transport ( ♦ )

This objective is relatively ambitious and about half the Member States report key

initiatives under this heading. Some of these are focused on transport policy, such as the

lorry tolls in Austria or the toll system on Czech highways. Other initiatives run the risk

of being counter-productive in this area, such as the Portuguese Logistics Strategic Plan

or the modernisation of roads in Bulgaria. Indeed, the large investments in infrastructurein the New Member States notably provide an opportunity to build sustainable transport

infrastructures. However, there is a lack of evidence that this opportunity is fully and

always used. More fundamental actions also relate to spatial planning, such as the Irish

National Spatial Strategy and the Compact Cities Initiative in Denmark. These are rather



Objective 3: Reducing pollutant emissions to minimise effects on health ( ♦ )

This objective is closely related to the above objective and, therefore, most countries haverefrained from specific actions under this heading. Actions are broadly similar to the

above objective and are rather scattered; they vary from local speed limits to particle

filters, tax subsidies for smaller cars and park-and-ride systems. Again, the value added

of this objective appears to be small.

Objective 4: Balanced shift towards environmentally friendly transport modes ( ♦♦♦ )

Many countries report on a wide range of actions to promote a shift towardsenvironmentally friendly transport modes, both for passengers and for freight. Public

transport initiatives include investment schemes in rail (both national, regional and

suburban) as well as road charges. Specific initiatives to promote bicycling have been

taken by Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy and the UK. Freight initiatives

concern multimodal transport, such as the new Danish strategy for intermodal transport

and Hungary. However, not all such initiatives from the past have proved to be effective.

Examples of early intermodal transport initiatives – often with a limited or mixed effect –

can be found in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Objective 5: Reduce transport noise ( ♦ )

Specific reporting on key objectives is limited to about 1/3 of Member States. Such

initiatives are commonly framed in the context of a national noise strategy, with actions

aiming to reduce road noise and that from railway lines – and much less to limit aircraft

noise with the exception of Austria. Member States report about different challenges in

this area and they are in different policy stages. Active Member States in combatingtransport noise are Austria, Denmark, France (black spots along the national road

network), Italy (urban traffic plans), the Netherlands (silent road surfaces, noise walls),

and the UK (mapping noise sources).

Objective 6: Improve efficiency and performance of public transport ( ♦♦ )

This objective has significant overlap with the objective to shift towards environmentally

friendly transport modes. Under this heading, public transport investment programmes

are frequently mentioned. However it is not always clear to which extent these

programmes will contribute to sustainable development. For instance in Ireland, public

transport investment programmes include an upgrading of regional airports.

Obj ti 7 A fl t i i f 140 /k i 2008 d 120 /k i 2012 (♦)



Objective 8: Halving road transport fatalities by 2010 compared to 2000 ( ♦♦♦ )

Halving of transport deaths by 2010 compared to 2000 remains a challenging goal50.Nevertheless, Member State reports remain broadly optimistic. Indeed many key policy

initiatives are recorded. Actions range from more stringent enforcement of speed limits,

infrastructure improvements and enforcement of resting times and driving hours all the

way to information campaigns.

b. Latest developments in MS Action to tackle these challenge

•

The only objective where all Member States are taking some action is Objective 2(Promoting sustainable energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions). Most of

the actions to realise this objective are fiscal measures designed to stimulate the

purchase of smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, and to promote alternative fuels.

• Related to Objective 2 is Objective 3 as this calls for reducing emissions from

transport to minimise health effects and effects on the environment. Thus, arguably,

the actions of MS in pursuit of Objective 2 can be seen as also supporting Objective

3.

• Objective 8 (halving of transport deaths by 2010 compared to 2000) is the other

objective where most MS have undertaken actions. These actions have ranged from

more stringent enforcement of speed limits, infrastructure improvements,

enforcement of resting times and driving hours, and information campaigns.

• Objective 5 (reducing transport noise) is also covered by many countries as they

proceed to comply with the noise directive (2002/49/EC).

• The remaining objectives are covered sporadically and for most practical purposes

are not the focus of actions being undertaken in MS.

It is difficult to say in general terms which countries are lagging and which are leading as

individual Member States are at different stages of development in terms of their

transport systems.

• An indicative suggestion is that Austria, France, Hungary, and the UK appear to be

performing well in terms of taking actions to realize the objectives.

• Relatively few key policy initiatives have been recorded in Denmark, Estonia,

Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia,

Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

• There is also a clear difference in the actions being undertaken by the New Member

States. Most of these actions are focussed on improving infrastructure and at

b i i th i l d l ti i li ith EC di ti



• Not all actions are known to be effective; for instance regional or national initiatives

to promote intermodal transport are dependent on higher level system operability andthe fulfilment of a range of conditions;

• Interconnectedness between the aims and actions; many actions are taken forward

without necessarily being attentive to unexpected side-effects on other objectives

that are also needed to contribute to sustainable transport.

3.5 Conclusions and recommendations

a. Highlights and main conclusions regarding the progress towards the EU SDS

A range of key problems persist in the area of sustainable transport: Decoupling the

growth in the demand for transport from economic growth and energy use is a first one; it

is not really happening until now. Getting the prices right is another challenge. Other

challenges include stimulating technological innovations and their adoptions to improve

the performance of the road transport sector vis-à-vis emissions and energy consumption;

meeting the mobility needs of the urban population and meeting the future demand for air

transport in Europe while minimising its environmental impacts. Meeting the

transportation need of the elderly is yet another challenge. Demand for air transport is

expected to double by 2020. The current capacity of the airport and air traffic control

infrastructure is inadequate for accommodating this demand. Meeting future demand for

air transport is also going to pose challenges with regards to the safety of air transport 51.

With regard to the progress by objective, there is only limited room for optimism. As aconclusion, overall objectives are currently not being achieved and the actions being

taken by the EU and the MS do not offer much hope of reaching these objectives.

Decoupling is not happening (TERM 2005): Growth of freight transport volumes has

outpaced economic growth since 1995 and growth of passenger freight transport has

exceeded economic growth between 1990 – 2002.

Growth in transport related energy use has exceeded growth in energy use in all sectors

(WBCSD 2003): transport’s share of total energy consumption is increasing and oil

provides 98% of the energy used by the transport sector (TERM 2005).



There is no comprehensive picture of the effects of noise on health and quality of life.

However, the conclusion of experts based on the limited evidence that is available is thatthe situation is worrying: noise is one of the larger contributors to loss of healthy life-

years. A large proportion of the population is exposed and best efforts to mitigate noise

exposure have only resulted in stabilisation of noise annoyance.

Road fatalities have been declining, but it is unlikely that the number of fatalities in 2010

will be half the number in 2000, especially in light of recent reports on the topic.


The first three objectives; decoupling economic growth and the demand for transport,

achieving sustainable levels of transport energy use, and reducing transport greenhouse

gas emissions should be reconsidered. With regard to the decoupling objective it is

important to substantiate the claim that demand for transport could grow more slowly

than the economy – as the evidence to date is limited. Furthermore, if adverse impacts of

transport are reduced below acceptable or agreed levels, the justification for reducing

transport demand would be less strong.

With regard to the second objective, it is hard to define a “sustainable level of energy

use.” It would be better to replace this with terminology that specifies improving energy

efficiency as an objective.

With regard to the third objective, threshold values should be specified for noise and air

quality.

The fourth objective regarding a balanced shift towards environmentally friendly

transport modes is also difficult to define and measure. Instead, specific objectives

regarding rail transport, inland waterways, public transport and non-motorised transport

modes can be added.

An objective should be added with regard to the reduction/elimination of subsidies to the

transport sector.

c. Recommendations/comments on the theme within the EU SDS strategy

The processes used for evaluating transport projects need to be modified so as to enable

id ti f i f t t d h l t t t lt ti (f



The situation with regards to availability of data for making transport policy is deficient

and needs to be remedied. Most transport policy is not based on data, but on the results of models that have not been validated in any meaningful sense with real data.

Targets should no longer be voluntary, but should be binding.

Urban transport should be given more attention and prominence in the sustainable

transport strategy.



4. Sustainable consumption and production

Overall Objective: To promote sustainable consumption and production patterns

• Objective 1: Promoting sustainable consumption and production by addressing social and economic

development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems and decoupling economic growth from

environmental degradation.

• Objective 2: Improving the environmental and social performance for products and processes and

encouraging their uptake by business and consumers.

• Objective 3: Aiming to achieve by 2010 an EU average level of Green Public Procurement (GPP)

equal to that currently achieved by the best performing Member States.

• Objective 4: The EU should seek to increase its global market share in the field of environmental

technologies and eco-innovations.

In many ways, this theme represents the most fundamental challenge of the EU SDS as it

targets the behaviour or consumers and producers.

The overall EU objective in regard to Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) is

"to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns". This objective is

specified at the SCP website of the Union: the SCP policy aims to "promote sustainable

consumption and production by addressing social and economic development within the

carrying capacity of ecosystems and decoupling economic growth from environmental

degradation"52. To achieve SCP requires us to change "the way we design, produce, use

and dispose of the products and services we own and consume"53.



After reviewing UN54 and OECD55 documents relating to SCP it is clear that there is a

lack of a clear definition of the concept. This is also reflected in academic literature56.This is also emphasised in the main conclusion of the Marrakesh meeting 16-19 June

2003 – the first expert meeting of the 10 year framework programme for sustainable

consumption and production, initiating the Marrakesh Process57.

In order to operationalise this topic, this Chapter will follow the objectives set out in the

EU SDS:1. Promoting sustainable consumption and production by addressing social and

economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems and decouplingeconomic growth from environmental degradation;

2. Improving the environmental and social performance for products and processes andencouraging their uptake by business and consumers;

3. Aiming to achieve by 2010 an EU average level of Green Public Procurement (GPP)equal to that currently achieved by the best performing Member States;

4. The EU should seek to increase its global market share in the field of environmentaltechnologies and eco-innovations.

It should be noted that we consider the first objective to be horizontal and cutting into the

other three more specific objectives. The first objective is identical to the overall

objective of EU on SCP presented at the SCP website of the EU as mentioned above.

Moreover, the second objective could be separated into two objectives:

2a58: Improving the environmental and social performance for products and processes;

2b: Encouraging the uptake by business and consumers of environmental and social

performance.

54Johannesburg plan of implementation, see

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/WSSD_POI_PD/English/POIChapter3.htm , International Expert meeting on the

10-year framework of programmes for sustainable consumption and production (Marrakesh 16-19 June 2003) UNEP see



4.1 Main challenges

a. What are the emerging challenges facing the EU in this area?

The emerging challenge of increasing unsustainable consumption in Europe can be

illustrated by the following statement from the business task force on sustainable

consumption and production at Cambridge University: “If replicated world wide, the

western patterns of consumption and production, it is estimated, need at least three planets

worth of resources”59. This highlights the need for action and prioritising of SCP. The

challenge is thus that: “We need urgently to harness ingenuity, technological innovationand behavioural change in ways that will enable us to make the transition to meeting our

economic and social goals within the capacity of our planet”60.

More specifically, key challenges that are outlined in this area are:

• The environmental consequences of industrialisation in developed economies as well

as the life cycles of their citizens arising from the patterns of consumption and

production;

• The environmental and social consequences of transition i.e. economic development

in industrialising countries;

• The system for production in Europe does not fill its potential of improving

competitiveness while reducing negative environmental impacts of the life cycle of

products61.

Achieving such sustainable consumption and production is complex, especially as it

concerns a poorly defined and very broad concept depending on interrelated actionswithin political, business and civil society domains in order to change consumption and

production patterns. This is reflected in the figure below62:



A broad scope of policy measures are needed in order to stimulate sustainableconsumption and production63. Finding efficient policy responses within the

competencies of the EU taking into consideration the market mechanism including the

below mentioned challenges identified by the UK Sustainable Consumption Roundtable64:

• Consumers alone are not able to change mainstream product markets - this change

depends on various factors;

• Product performance is pivotal. If the marketing mix, including price, is "within the

expected norms of the relevant market" then any attributes of a good, hereundersustainability, becomes attractive to the consumer;

• Regarding energy efficient appliances labelling has low efficiency when not

followed up by actions from regulators, retailers and manufacturers;

• Eco-labelling is not, as such, a driver for "significant market transformation", other

additional measures are needed;

• Studies indicate that fiscal incentives are effective when they close the price gap for

more sustainable products or create significant tax rebates for their use.

Another challenge lies in the difficulty to move from a generic discussion to specific

actions with a focus on implementation65.

Furthermore, it is difficult to secure that SCP is prioritised and kept on both the EU and

national agendas and not down prioritised compared to other and more vote appealing

topics.

Well targeted international cooperation as well as coordination of action between the

various DGs and among Member states in order to create coherent policy responses.

Measuring progress in the SCP is also a considerable challenge. Eurostat has elaborated

several indicators on SCP which are divided into three main categories 66:

• Waste and resource management: seeks to monitor resource efficiency and reducing

the overall use of non- renewable resources and are measured on resource

productivity, municipal waste generation and treatment and emissions of acidifyingsubstances, ozone precursors and particulate matter;

• Consumption patterns: provides background information on consumption and the

level of consumption: the number of households, household expenditure, electricity

ti b h h ld fi l ti f d ti d



These three main categories of indicators do to a certain degree reflect the EU SDS.

Nevertheless, it can be questioned whether the actual indicators are sufficient to measureprogress in consumption and production patterns according to the priorities stipulated in

the SDS. The indicators focus mainly on three areas: waste, energy consumption and

agriculture, and neither of these are mentioned directly in the strategy, but only indirectly.

Some of the indicators do, however, reflect the strategy inter alia eco-labelling efforts.

Nevertheless, there is only a weak correlation between the strategy and the indicators.

b. What are the key problems and their relations in this area?A number of key problems can be mentioned that limit progress in achieving sustainable

consumption and production:

• Lack of an institutional setup that caters for sustainable consumption and production,

hereunder a market where the benefits of sustainable products are reflected in the

price. This is a horizontal issue and includes objective 1 of the EU SDS on SCP;

• Lack of consumer and voter focus on and knowledge of sustainability and

environmental degradation and lack of willingness to pay for sustainable products.

This is to a certain extent catered for in objectives 2b and 3 in the SDS;• Inertia in the process of changing to sustainable production patterns and external

competitive pressures and to establish a climate that supports sustainable production

patterns. This is to a limited extent included in objectives 2a and 4 in the SDS.


Objective 1: The institutional set up for creating a framework that caters for sustainable

supply and demand, coherent policy responses and reducing barriers. This is receivingonly little attention both at EU and national level.

Objective 2 a: Improving environmental and social performance of products and

processes receive attention through increased focus on innovation, under objective four,

but otherwise, attention is very limited. Some eco-labelling efforts have been initiated

however.

Objective 2 b: Most countries as well as the EU report initiatives to increase consumerawareness. These activities are mostly limited, however, to a campaign here and there.

Which initiatives to increase consumer awareness are working?

Obj ti 3 Ch i bli t tt l i li it d tt ti



4.2 Views on the appropriate policy response

a. Views from the professional/academic community

One of the challenges within SCP is the lack of a clear definition and a vague approach to

the concept. This indicates that there is not a clear view on appropriate action. The

following policy responses can be formulated by professionals, as phrased by Roone and

Anastasiou:

• Strong mechanisms for benchmarking and programmes for sharing best practices;

•

Awards or accreditations for leading companies within sustainable production;• Economic support for initiatives changing consumption and production patterns;

• Aligning government visions and rhetoric with actual action and practices;

• A strengthened link between competitiveness and sustainability;

• Enhanced focus on research and development67.

In the below we have compared the Johannesburg implementation plan with the four

objectives of the EU SDS on SCP to check for consistency and coverage.

Based on the comparison in Table 1 below, a correlation between the Johannesburg

implementation plan on SCP and the EU objectives can be drawn. However, the

implementation plan is considerably more specific than the EU SDS. The

implementation plan moreover has a clearer distinction between objectives on products

and processes, while innovation is mentioned in the EU SDS objectives 2b and 4 on SCP.

The EU SDS, on the other hand, has a more specified focus on public procurement.



Table 1: Correlation between the Johannesburg implementation plan and the EU priorities on SCP

Johannesburg implementation plan68 EU SDS SCP priorities Correlation

Identify specific activities, tools, policies, measures and

monitoring and assessment mechanisms, including, where

appropriate, life-cycle analysis and national indicators for

measuring progress, bearing in mind that standards applied by

some countries may be inappropriate and of unwarranted

economic and social cost to other countries, in particular

developing countries;

Adopt and implement policies and measures aimed at

promoting sustainable patterns of production and consumption,

applying, inter alia, the polluter-pays principle described in

principle 16 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and

Development;

1: Promoting sustainable

consumption and production by

addressing social and economic

development within the carrying

capacity of ecosystems and

decoupling economic growth from

environmental degradation.

Medium

The EU SDS is

general and covers

the overall message

of the

implementation

plan

Develop production and consumption policies to improve the

products and services provided, while reducing environmental

and health impacts, using, where appropriate, science-based

approaches, such as life-cycle analysis;

2a: Improving the environmental

and social performance for

products and processes

Medium

EU SDS is vague

Develop awareness-raising programmes on the importance of

sustainable production and consumption patterns, particularly

among youth and the relevant segments in all countries,

especially in developed countries, through, inter alia,

education, public and consumer information, advertising and

other media, taking into account local, national and regional

cultural values;

Develop and adopt, where appropriate, on a voluntary basis,

effective, transparent, verifiable, non-misleading and non-discriminatory consumer information tools to provide

information relating to sustainable consumption and

production, including human health and safety aspects. These

tools should not be used as disguised trade barriers;

2b: Encouraging the uptake by

business and consumers

Medium

The

implementation

plan also focus on

the good

governance aspects

and institutional

requirements to

actually changepatterns of

consumption and

production

n.a. 3: Aiming to achieve by 2010 an

EU average level of Green Public

Procurement (GPP) equal to that

currently achieved by the best

performing Member States.

Weak

The

implementation

plan makes no

mention of PP

Increase eco-efficiency, with financial support from all

sources, where mutually agreed, for capacity-building,

technology transfer and exchange of technology with

developing countries and countries with economies in

4: The EU should seek to increase

its global market share in the field

of environmental technologies and

eco innovations

Medium

The

implementation



4.3 EU action

a. Latest developments in EU Action

Comparing EU action to the objectives and targets set out in the SDS the EU has had

some action under three of the four objectives set out. It must be emphasised that the

information below is based on a review of DG ENV 70 and related Commission websites.

In order to secure a complete overview of EU action a more comprehensive analysis isneeded.

Objective 1: The EU has participated in the Marrakesh process and has started preparing

an SCP action plan. This will, however, not be finalised by 2007 which is the deadline

according to the actions in the EU SDS. There have also been some waste initiatives such

as the European Parliament’s position framework directive on waste71 and a

communication from the Commission on waste and by-products72.

Objective 2a: There has been some focus on Eco-management and Audit Schemes

(EMAS) and support to accession countries under the EMAS COMPAS PLUS

programme.

Objective 2b: There have been initiatives to increase awareness of consumers, with the

organisation of "Green WEEK" and to strengthen benchmarking.

Objective 3: We have not found any specific initiatives supporting this objective. A study

on costs and benefits on GPP in Europe has been carried out by ICLEI and published on

DG Environment's website73.

Objective 4: There have been several initiatives under the umbrella of the ETAP

framework such as the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)

where, amongst others, a user guide was presented in July 2007. The 7th Framework

Programme for Research (FP7) also gives attention to environment as well as other

sectors that are influencing production patterns74.




The competence of the EU versus the competence of the Member States on this issue

following the principle of subsidiarity – this may involve the risk that this competenceissue could lead to lack of responsibility and ownership at both the EU and Member States

level.

SCP is a broad issue and requires joint actions from several DGs e.g. DG TREN, DG

ENV, DG COMP, DG RESEARCH, DG TRADE, DG SANCO, DG MARKT and DG

ENTR; the EU clearly faces a challenge of policy coordination and coherence in this area.








1. What are the latest developments in MS Action to tackle the challenge/problem?




Objective 1: Promoting Sustainable Consumption and Production by addressing social

and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems ( ♦♦ ).

This broad-ranging objective includes the fundamental target to decouple economic

growth from environmental degradation. Although the majority of Member States report

on progress in this field, there appears to be only limited consistency in the approach to

be taken. Actions are dominated by energy efficiency and waste management initiatives.

Only few countries have mentioned participation in the Marrakesh process or

development of an SCP action plan. References to different ways of economic

production – e.g. by promoting a knowledge or service economy – are relatively rare.



Objective 3: Aiming to achieve by 2010 an EU average level of Green Public

Procurement equal to that currently achieved by the best performing Member States ( ♦♦ )In many Member States, Green Public Procurement does not yet play an active role butinitiatives to promote it are increasing. Several Member states have thereto preparedaction plans in the field. Mapping and identification of best practices is undertaken by alimited number of countries. Amongst the leading countries in this area can be countedAustria, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK.

Objective 4: The EU should seek to increase its global market share in the fields of

environmental technologies and eco-innovations ( ♦ )Several countries refer to implementation of or action plans related to ETAP. But only alimited number of Member States have actions other than this, including Austria, Estonia,Finland, France, Ireland, Sweden and the UK. The limited attention to this objective israther unexpected, as it allows for more pro-active and positive actions that are notnecessarily opposed to the short-term interests of consumer and producers. Furthermore,actions in this area also have the potential to contribute to the Lisbon Strategy.

a. What are the latest developments in MS Action to tackle the challenge/problem (by objective)?

The following statements are based solely on the information supplied in the country

reports prepared by each Member state76. Below follow some general observations of the

actions of the Member states under each of the areas identified as covered by the four key

objectives that are stated in the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.

Objective 1: Action is dominated by energy and waste management initiatives such as

renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives as well as efforts to increase recycling.

Only few countries have mentioned participation in the Marrakesh process or

development of an SCP action plan.

Objective 2a: The most frequent action under this objective is support to companies

introducing EMAS, 10 country reports refer to EMAS, and several countries make

mention of national or EU labelling schemes. None of the countries has specifically

mentioned environmental or social targets for products and processes, although Italy hasinitiated a business dialogue to determine targets.

Objective 2b: Most MS have taken some initiatives to promote consumer awareness and

some also engage in business dialogue inter alia Germany which otherwise has only



Objective 4: Several countries refer to implementation of or action plans related to ETAP.

13 out of the 25 Member States included in the assessment have initiatives falling underthis objective

b. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?

A first impression is lack of direction in Member States action regarding SCP, particularly

concerning objectives 1, 2a and 4 where only limited action has occurred.

Some MS have a broad range of action plans and strategies, but there is little action in

several countries. A concern is that the focus on SCP is more words than action.

The effectiveness of awareness raising initiatives can be questioned as well. How are the

initiatives handled? Has the effect of the initiatives been measured? Has best practices

been identified? The initial impression based on the country reports is that the efforts are

rather scattered and an integrated approach to increasing awareness of consumers and

business seems to be lacking.

Several MS have created national labelling schemes. This raises several issues that

deserve further attention, such as:

• Do the labels contribute to fragment the internal market and serve as a barrier for

cross boarder trade?

• Does it confuse consumers that there are several labelling schemes on the market?

• How are these labels quality assured and can/do the consumers actually trust the

labels?


a. Highlights and main conclusions regarding the progress towards the EU SDS

• Little progress has been made both by Member States and the EU under all four

objectives;

• Many of the initiatives take the form of action plans, programmes and policy reviewsand actual action and effects following from these documents remains to be

demonstrated;

• The international SCP concept itself is poorly defined;



It is important to see the connection between consumption and production patterns, thesix other themes and the overall aim of the renewed EU SDS strategy:

"to identify and develop actions to enable the EU to achieve continuous improvement of quality of life both for

current and for future generations, through the creation of sustainable communities able to manage and use

resources efficiently and to tap the ecological and social innovation potential of the economy, ensuring prosperity,

environmental protection and social cohesion"77

In order to maintain SCP as an independent theme it must be demonstrated that doing so

provides value added. If this can be demonstrated it is necessary to:

• Communicate the particular characteristics of the theme as the theme is intertwined

with the six other themes of the strategy. Actions under these themes may influence

consumption and production patterns as well as actions under SCP influence the

other themes;

• The concept needs to be clearly defined to secure a common understanding, which

today seems to be lacking;

• The scope of the objectives must be clearly defined e.g. Objective 1 is somewhatunclear as well as the resemblance of Objectives 2a and Objective 4;

• The objectives need to be operationalised by introducing specific targets and actions

to be carried out, both regarding Member States and the EU.

c. Recommendations/comments on the theme

It should be assessed whether including SCP as an independent theme provides added

value and hence whether it is useful to have it as an independent theme in the strategy.

If it does add value and remains an independent theme, the following tasks must be

carried out:

• Communicate the particularity of the theme;

• Clearly define the concept of SCP;

• Clearly define the scope of each of the objectives;

• Specify operational tasks and actions under each of the objectives;

• Clear assignment of tasks and roles of the Commission and the Member States sincethere is a risk of neither taking the responsibility to act.

d. Policy Recommendations

L i l ti SCP i t f ld d i d t h tt ti i d d b th f



Consumption patterns are also steered by habits, traditions and ethical considerations that

are not easily influenced by mere legislative interventions and non conventionalinitiatives are needed. Policy makers also have an important role to play in promoting

and driving dialogue, as well as by learning and experimentation78.



5. Conservation and management of naturalresources

Overall Objective: To improve management and avoid overexploitation of natural

resources, recognising the value of ecosystem services

• Objective 1: Improving resource efficiency to reduce the overall use of non renewable natural

resources and the related environmental impacts of raw materials use, thereby using renewable

natural resources at a rate that does not exceed their regeneration capacity.

• Objective 2: Gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage by improving resource efficiency, inter

alia through the promotion of eco-efficient innovations.

• Objective 3: Improving management and avoiding overexploitation of renewable natural resources

such as fisheries, biodiversity, water, air, soil and atmosphere, restoring degraded marine ecosystems

by 2015 in line with the Johannesburg Plan (2002) including achievement of the Maximum Yield in

Fisheries by 2015.

• Objective 4: Halting the loss of biodiversity and contributing to a significant reduction in the

worldwide rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

• Objective 5: Contributing effectively to achieving the four United Nations global objectives on forests

by 2015.

• Objective 6: Avoiding the generation of waste and enhancing efficient use of natural resources by

applying the concept of life-cycle thinking and promoting reuse and recycling.

This objective covers a broad territory and is in many ways to be considered as a

fundamental pillar of environmental policy.

5.1 Main challenges

id ( i ll t i d t i li d d hi hl d l d ti ) f th



evidence (especially amongst industrialized and highly developed nations) for the

decoupling of global material extraction and use of natural resources from economicgrowth, emphasising that the production of economic output is becoming less material-

intensive in relative terms. At the same time, however, overall levels of resource

extraction are increasing in absolute terms in all regions of the world, which potentially

detract from the positive environmental developments, such as structural change towards

the service sector and diffusion of cleaner technologies and products. This trend is at best

incompatible with sustainable development, considering the fact that global

environmental problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and pollution (all

closely linked to the material throughput of the global economy) are already putting

pressures on the world's ecosystems beyond a sustainable level 81.

b. Key problems and their relations

In general, the EU is facing natural resource conservation challenges which are

inextricably linked with how to maintain and increase economic growth with current

unsustainable patterns of economic development. Europe has high absolute and relative

levels of material intensity and this drives increased resource extraction and use. A majorand obvious challenge is how resources should be used more efficiently, but also how to

monitor the process of natural resource extraction shifting to non-EU states as the EU

imports more of its requirements from abroad. Europe should beware of claiming that the

associated problems of bad management of natural resources are no longer a “European”

policy problem. In addition to the internationalisation of the problem is the multi-sectoral

nature of the problem: specifically, how to create change across various policy arena’s all

of which affect resource use. Furthermore, concerns as to how to affect change while

keeping costs in line with realistic competitive necessities; how to ensure security of

supply and reduce import dependency; how to make better use of waste products as they

can be valuable in their own right, how to measure accurately the resources that are being

used, how to set quantitative targets for such issues, how to change consumer and

producer behaviour so as to be more sustainable, are all current.

Within each of the natural resource categories and themes there are also clear issues that

need to be addressed:• 2/3rds of Europe’s trees are threatened82. Whereas the estimate for the ratio of

felling of trees to increment of trees is still around 60% and is technically, therefore,

still sustainable83, land-use changes and the encroachment of built-up areas still

j di th l t i bilit f E ’ t d i f i ifi t

in fact misguided optimism as what is required is a recovery in biodiversity across



in fact misguided optimism as what is required is a recovery in biodiversity across

Europe, which seems unlikely to be attained with the EU’s future impact onbiodiversity expected to increase with ongoing economic growth;

• Total waste production is still around 1.3 billion tonnes per year in the EU 85;

• Registration of resource use is not currently taking place (and is currently

approximated by energy consumption statistics);

• Although there is relative decoupling of resource consumption, waste and pollution

with economic growth there is still an absolute level of resource consumption that

has remained largely unchanged;

• Technical innovation can only offset relative resource consumption and production

and does not really tackle the underlying processes;

• The types of responses to these problems are still of a reactive nature and have

tended to treat the externalities of economic growth as a non-market problem. The

policy response is possibly changing to encourage market-led solutions that provide

incentives to industry to take resource costs and waste costs more fully into its

accounts.


According to the Member States’ country reports on their progress implementing the EU

SDS, natural resource management challenges range from fisheries, marine and coastal

zone management to species and ecosystem protection, from wetlands and forestry

protection to waste management and pollution prevention, from urban design to impacts

of globalization, from lack of sustainable signals and incentives to the consumer and to

industry, to unsustainable lifestyles. The degree to which this range of issues is reported

on and more importantly are tackled through policy is according to these reports non-

uniform, which is not considered a sufficient excuse for the lack of coherence in

approaches. In particular the problems that receive less attention include:

• Inter-sectoral approaches and holistic policy;

• Improving resource efficiency and material efficiency (in absolute terms and not just

through decoupling);

• Addressing the over-use of resources and the long-term problem affecting future

generations that current societies are ill-equipped to deal with in an urgent fashion;• The (inter)national, regional and local contexts that make unified policy response

difficult;

• Co-ordination of spatial planning policy in the EU, which is needed to provide a

f k f th diff t i iti th t d t b id d h d fi i l d





In a nutshell there is no clear view on the appropriate policy response as almost every

Community policy affects the use and management of natural resources. Different

contexts may imply a different interpretation and practical implementation of the policy

responses concerned, and therefore lead to different results. However, there is a wide

variety of policy options available to support better management of natural resources,

which if used in an effective manner can contribute to reduced impacts on natural

resources from continued economic growth. These commonly include economic

measures such as ecological fiscal reforms (e.g. material input and energy taxes), reforms

of the subsidy systems (e.g. temporary support for development of new eco-efficient

technologies and materials), certificates trading systems, and eco-efficient public

procurement. Focussing on key sectors that are either directly (e.g. mining, agriculture,

fisheries) or indirectly responsible for large amounts of natural resource extraction (e.g.energy, transport, and industry) will benefit the efficiency of the selected mix of

instruments as well87. The importance of improved material management for sustainable

development is also recognised by various institutions in international politics. The

European “Thematic Strategy on the sustainable use of natural resources” (EC, 2005)

aims to increase resource productivity, increase eco-efficiency and – if cleaner use is not

achievable – aims to substitute currently used resources with environmentally-friendlier

alternatives. The strategy is based on a 25 year period.

Forestry policy is an example of how raising awareness on this issue seems to have borne

fruits as there has been a small but steady increase in the total area of forested land in the

EU year on year88. There are, however, questions on the quality of the woods and

whether there is enough diversity within woodlands that is essential for good ecosystem

functioning. Sustainable forestry schemes can be considered as having succeeded and

there is generally more recognition of this fact. However, increasing forest fires and the

threat from global warming and climate change creates further uncertainties in terms of appropriate policy response. To this end, it is necessary to develop more sophisticated

indicators to gauge the ecological conditions of woodland ecosystems.

like fires, the nature of surrounding landscapes, the distance between protected areas, and



like fires, the nature of surrounding landscapes, the distance between protected areas, and

other variables all need to be considered. Establishing nature parks on a European scaleshould also focus on the connectivity between adjacent areas allowing extremely good

dispersal abilities for wildlife between the various areas.

There has also been progress in terms of deciding on the correct policy principles and

who should bear the costs of environmental degradation. The precautionary principle89

and the polluter pays principle90 are now both part of EU environmental law. A main

focus of EU legislation has been on industrial point sources of pollution with end of pipe

measures.

b. Recent changes

EU Member States have gone some way in developing strategic responses that are mainly

limited to managing the impacts of resource use and unsustainable consumption patterns.

Some obvious successes include shifting the concept of recycling and life-cycle thinking

into the mainstream of both policy making and citizen awareness. Another change is the

emergence of the ‘source principle’, which specifies that environmental damage shouldpreferably be prevented at the source, rather than by using the ‘end-of-pipe technology’.

In addition, the EU has indicated a preference for emission standards rather than

environmental quality standards, especially to deal with water and air pollution.

However, little efforts have so far been devoted to forecasting future patterns of natural

resource use and to providing ex-ante assessments of environmental and economic effects

of resource policies (both at a Member State level and on a European level). There are a

few exceptions as there have been studies on outlooks for material flows in Europe by the

European Topic Centre on Resource and Waste Management91 and new approaches to

forecast Ecological Footprints on the national level92. Nevertheless, the quantitative

assessment of the effectiveness of such policy is still at an early stage, making it difficult

to judge appropriateness in a meaningful way.

5.3 EU action

a. Latest developments in EU action

The EU has developed a strategic response mainly by managing the impacts of resource

use and consumption, as demonstrated by the directives concerning air and water quality.

measures and programmes of various EU policy documents related to this field includes



p g p y

references to agriculture and fisheries reforms as well as the new programmes for ruraldevelopment.

In relation to EU ambitions in this area, there has been action to:

• Decrease waste production and promote waste prevention, recycling etc;

• Decouple environmental impacts of resource use from economic growth;

• Increase the role of market-based instruments, in particular the use of taxation at EU

and national levels to help meet environment policy goals. The Commission is to

work more closely with Member states to encourage a shift in the burden of taxation

from labour towards protecting the environment;

• Halt biodiversity loss by 2010;

• Create a network of ecological/natural areas (NATURA 2000) throughout Europe

that is based on national protected areas and networks, e.g. the Ecological Main

Structure (EHS) in the Netherlands;

• Adopt various action plans, e.g. forest action plan and biomass action plan;

b. Direct Initiatives

In December 2005 the European Commission presented its Thematic Strategy for the

Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, aiming to reduce the environmental impacts

associated with resource use by decoupling environmental impacts from economic

growth with a 25-year timeframe. Unfortunately, no quantitative targets have been set to

date. The Commission has outlined three factors, which are seen as key to achieving a

stable decoupling:

• More value- creating while using fewer resources (increasing ‘resource

productivity');

• Less impact- reducing the overall environmental impact per unit of resources used

(increasing ‘eco-efficiency');

• Better alternatives- if cleaner use cannot be achieved, substituting currently used

resources with better alternatives.

The strategy focuses on:• Improving the understanding of resource use, its environmental impacts and its links

to economic growth;

• Developing tools to monitor and report progress;

I iti ti ti t diff t l l f t h l hi th ll l



• There is no coherent monitoring in place to measure improvements in resource



efficiency within separate stages of the life-cycle of individual materials;• Setting objectives and a clear roadmap for EU action is not currently taking place

(also in part due to the lack of monitoring and therefore the inability to set

quantitative targets);

• Furthermore setting plausible targets through the involvement of designated actors in

each key sector is not yet happening;

• There is a need to develop a well-informed citizen-base as conscious consumers of

goods and services, which would provide an impetus for improvement; this would

cause businesses to drive the agenda forward and not be reliant on public policy

intervention;

• A need for a holistic approach to avoid shifting the environmental burden from one

phase to another or from one sector to another.

e. How to position the EU in this respect in a broader international context

Based on some of the concerns about EU action we put forward recommendations

concerning the global nature of the problem and the way that the EU may be able toposition itself in a broader international context as set out here:

• Tackle the obstructions to presenting a coherent sustainable development policy to

the international community by incorporating the crucial trade-related aspects of

sustainable natural resource use. This entails taking steps to measure the natural

resource footprint of the EU that includes the net imports of natural resources from

less developed nations;

• Take steps to measure the flow of resources internationally and consequently to

gauge the relative contribution to resource exploitation that the EU is genuinely

responsible for through importing from other countries;

• The EU is the largest aid donor to the developing world and should incorporate

sustainable policies in this aspect of its international operations;

• Develop institutional facilities to take the lead on integrated sustainable natural

resource policy and conservation at the global level;

• EU participation at environmental conferences needs to be given more weight by

striving for voting rights and going beyond a mere representational status;• Develop headline indicators, policy support indicators and monitoring indicators for

international benchmarking;

• Build on the practical experience with knowledge as a tool for improving ongoing

international political processes;















Objective 1: Improving resource efficiency ( ♦ )For actions regarding the improvement of resource efficiency, there is a noticeable

difference between Member States in how and to what extent the actions taken bear upon

the problem. In fact according to the country reports on their progress, the use of

language by Member States indicates there are more ambitions in this sub-field than

concrete actions being taken. Some Member States do have clear quantitative targets for

increasing resource efficiency and/or bettering materials consumption relative to GDP93,

however many Member States simply do not focus on this issue and instead devote their

attention to issues connected to halting biodiversity loss, contributing to sustainable

forestry goals or conserving species. There is also no mention made of how best to

translate the measurements of resource efficiency into a system that measures

environmental pressures that can a) better highlight whether the resource in question

needs to be used more efficiently in the first place and b) further aid Member States to

implement all the ambitions they have shown in this area. More targeted action will also

be needed to reduce diffuse water pollution from agriculture to achieve the objectives of

the Water Framework Directive94.

Objective 2: Gaining and maintaining competitive advantage ( ♦ )

For action on gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage Member States have



310 invertebrate species that occur in the EU25 are considered to be globally97



threatened

97

. Thus it is not clear that this will change for the better with the policiesprescribed within the MS reports. What remains equally unclear is the progress being

made by Member States as to which extent connectivity between nature areas and

especially between nature reserves across trans-national boundaries are being taken into

consideration as well.

Objective 5: Contributing to UN goals on forestry ( ♦♦ )

There is plenty of progress being made in the area of sustainable forestry and in particular

contributing to the UN goals on forestry. There are EU-wide increases in the amount of forest reserves being designated, while the procurement rules of national governments

have been tightened so sources of timber being used are certified as sustainable.

Inventories of forests and their contribution to storing greenhouse gases such as carbon

dioxide have been carried out in many Member States, while particular Member States

(especially in the Mediterranean regions) have set up national plans for tackling forest

fires. Yet concrete key policy initiatives appear to be modest in countries such as France,

Spain or Greece – which have all suffered to various degrees from forest fires thissummer. The linkages between forestry and biodiversity and renewable resource

efficiency is not clearly defined by Member States, which is a pity as this is an areas

where the inter-linkages between the sub components of this theme and indeed between

the broader themes could be made explicit. Again as in other themes under natural

resource management, a potential weakness of this theme is the lack of nuanced

indicators that can adequately reflect the quality and quantity of forestry user services and

the ecosystem services that flow from these biomes too.

Objective 6: Avoiding the generation of waste ( ♦ )

Action to avoiding the generation of waste and to deal effectively with waste is becoming

increasingly geared towards prioritizing recycling. National plans have been put in place

that also set ambitious targets for reducing household waste and that increase recycling of

materials. The degree to which separation of different materials occurs for recycling is

difficult to ascertain from the country reports. There is also the problem of variation

within Member States due to regional disparities in the laws concerning waste disposal.Member States have recently started to tax for instance combustion of household waste in

order to increase recycling; others have started to tax land fill sites to achieve similar

effects. Despite progress in a number of countries, overall reporting under this heading

i d t

Examples of types of above interventions:

•



•

Some countries have introduced raw material taxes on the extraction of minerals e.g.sand, gravel, limestone (also licenses for extraction of certain raw materials);

• Some countries focus on Integrated Product Policy (IPP) targets production and

consumption: e.g. directive on energy performance of buildings. Also economic

instruments such as water pricing falls under this category;

• Waste phase: An emission standard for waste treatment facilities, e.g. landfill and

incineration directives. Other instruments: the UK has introduced landfill tax, which

provides incentive to recycle more waste.

The contribution to the EU SDS according to the Member States’ progress reports is

varied. Some Member States have - more than others - incorporated various aspects of

sustainability policy into relevant conservation themes. Sweden and Germany stand out

for having taken significant measures within the different objectives of the theme of

natural resource management: Germany in particular setting out quantitative targets for its

goals on resource efficiency and targeting absolute reductions in material intensity of its

industrial activities. Portugal is also highlighted here as having many planned measuresthat are linked to the EU SDS. Even though it has not necessarily implemented all the

measures while this report was being written, the progress report gives a strong signal that

there is strategy being developed that is holistic and moreover is due to the perceived

need for such a strategy. However, there are Member States which seem to be not as

clear in how they plan to proceed and have not prioritised the EU SDS into their policy

programming period (for 2007-2013).

c. Main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action

• Approaches are not integrated;

• Policy response tends to be restricted to the most convenient of the three intervention

areas which should actually be tackled together;

• Costly investments may not be the most efficient way to make sustainability

practical;

• Competitiveness fears;

•

Tax raising measures rather than real environmentally-friendly measures.


measures such as ecological fiscal reforms (e.g. material input and energy taxes), reforms



of the subsidy systems (e.g. temporary support for development of new eco-efficienttechnologies and materials), certificates trading systems, and eco-efficient public

procurement. Focussing on key sectors that are either directly (e.g. mining, agriculture,

fisheries) or indirectly responsible for large amounts of natural resource extraction (e.g.

energy, transport, and industry) will benefit the efficiency of the selected mix of

instruments as well. There seems to be a tendency by Member States to report on and

weight biodiversity strategies and biological conservation more than the other sub-themes

and objectives.

Where resource efficiency is concerned, only one or two countries can point to concrete

measures being taken to improve the current inefficiencies.

Several actions to promote the conservation and management of natural resources have

been undertaken or set up.

Although the dimensions of the problem are of sufficient complexity to make one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions dangerous, the unsystematic reporting on the progress towards

the EU SDS shows that at least some degree of unification of responses is desirable.

There is no clear definition of the range of policy options available to Member States for

tackling the issues mentioned in this theme, with the associated costs and benefits

attached.


The scope of this theme is probably too large and should be more clearly defined, i.e. the

conservation of nature and biodiversity plays a more prominent role in nearly all the

Member States reports and strategies and should probably be given its own whole theme,

especially when considering the close links between ecosystem services and human well-

being and the resultant ability to conduct economic growth that is in general increasingly

being recognized/emphasised by scientists.

Below are more specific suggested changes to the original EU SDS for this theme:

• Objective 4 (halting biodiversity) is also related to Objective 5 (UN goals on

forestry);

Obj ti 1 (i i ffi i ) i di tl l t d t Obj ti 2



Develop more quantitative outcome measures (as well as indicators) to allow significanttargets that have been reached to be clearly recognized.

Increase inter-sectoral co-operation and horizontal approaches to tackle specific

objectives such as resource efficiency.

The focus on biological conservation is probably due in part to the relative ease with

which Member States can set aside conservation areas as opposed to tackling themes

directly related to generating economic growth and development, but that also affects theconservation and management of natural resources – the latter may prove harder and less

popular to implement. There is also no guarantee that current nature reserve policies will

be an effective measure in the long term due to the dynamic nature of ecosystems and

moreover due to the increasing unpredictability of species’ continued habitat preferences

due to climate change. Furthermore, the ease with which Member States can report on

this leads one to the conclusion that the indicators warrant a re-examination of the current

reporting obligations by Member States along with the development of more sophisticatedindicators for measuring biodiversity and ecosystem well-being.

6. Public health



Overall objective: To promote good public health on equal conditions and improve protection against

health threats

• Objective 1: Improving protection against health threats by developing capacity to respond to them in

a coordinated manner.

• Objective 2: Further improving food and feed legislation, including review of food labelling.

• Objective 3: Continuing to promote high animal health and welfare standards in the EU and

internationally.

• Objective 4: Curbing the increase in lifestyle-related and chronic diseases, particularly among socio-

economically disadvantaged groups and areas.

• Objective 5: Reducing health inequalities within and between Member States by addressing the wider

determinants of health and appropriate health promotion and disease prevention strategies. Actions

should take into account international cooperation in fora like WHO, the Council of Europe, OECD

and UNESCO.

• Objective 6: Ensuring that by 2020 chemicals, including pesticides, are produced, handled and used

in ways that do not pose significant threats to human health and the environment. In this context, the

rapid adoption of the Regulation for the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of

chemicals (REACH) will be a milestone, the aim being to eventually replace substances of very high

concern by suitable alternative substances or technologies.

• Objective 7: Improving information on environmental pollution and adverse health impacts.

• Objective 8: Improving mental health and tackling suicide risks.

In many ways, public health is a theme that increases in significance. It has strong

relations with both environmental and social objectives – as well as economic themes. Its

place in the EU SDS, therefore, appears to be well justified.



The emerging challenges are mainly related to the ageing of its population and theincreasing trends in lifestyle related diseases linked with obesity, physical inactivity, and

tobacco and alcohol consumption. There is also evidence that factors such as particulate

matter in the air, noise and ground-level ozone damage the health of thousands of people

every year99.

Environmental pollutants, including pesticides, endocrine disruptors, dioxins and PCBs persist in the environment, accumulating over time and we do not know enough about

their long-term effect on health100

.

Regional disparities exist throughout the EU in relation to health environmentalproblems. Examples include the prevalence of waterborne diseases and exposure tooutdoor pollution101.


Seven leading risk factors are responsible for the burden of ill health due to non

communicable diseases

102

. With the exception of tobacco all other risk-factors are eitherdirectly or indirectly related to nutrition (overweight, low fruit and vegetable intake, highcholesterol, high blood pressure, little physical activity and alcohol consumption).

Tackling major health determinants is therefore of great importance and a prerequisite forreducing the burden of disease and promoting the health of the population. Healthdeterminants are amenable and can be influenced through policy interventions in differentsectors and policy making areas, including transport and environment (air pollution,occupational factors, ultraviolet radiation and the built environment)103.

The expectation that prevalence figures of depression will rise dramatically is a bigconcern for the population104. In addition to its contribution to ill health, mental health isa crucial component of economic growth.

The safety of products and services — including food safety and rapid food alerts — arekey priorities. In this respect, health and consumer protection policies are connected.

Environmental and health policies also need to work in tandem to achieve a high level of health protection105. Reducing health inequalities include differences between MemberStates, but also differences within them including, for example, social inequalities ineducation or employment status which have a clear impact on health106.

c. Problems receiving less attention

From the consultation exercise (2007) on the operational aspects of the new Health107













Strategy that was adopted in October 2007107 it appeared that many respondents said thatEuropean cooperation should be enhanced in a number of fields including health threats(vaccination and bioterrorism preparedness), health inequalities (gender specific healthpromotion), health information and the promotion of healthy lifestyles – especiallynutrition, mental health, and smoking.

Prevention campaigns for improving healthy lifestyles should be targeted towardsparticular groups such as children and young people, the elderly, people from minority

groups or people suffering from chronic diseases. Priority areas include obesity,cardiovascular disease and cancer. Contributors also stressed the need for thedevelopment of a European health information system, making use of reliable data108.

Other issues include patient safety (healthcare-acquired infections, management of clinical risks, quality standards and safety of products) and innovation (new technologiessuch as personalized medicines and e-Health).



The stakeholders that provided input to the new Health Strategy109 expressed support for

the approach proposed by the EC:

• Taking action where European added value is clear, and where challenges are of a

cross-border nature110

;• Health in all policies is needed111;

• On health threats: Ensure preparedness for health threats and protection of European

citizens through enhanced cooperation between the Member States;

• On health promotion: Using life-cycle and key setting approaches. Focus on health

education to children through schools, information to adults through workplaces and

information to the elderly through targeted tools;

• On health determinants: Focus on areas where Member States could agree on policy

goals and methods to tackle health determinants and inequalities. Examples of short

term objectives mentioned include: a reduction of alcohol and tobacco consumption;

• On health information: development of an information system with mandatory

collection and exchange of information that would be accessible to all;



Specific EU actions in 2007 include, for example, a Green paper “Towards a Europe freefrom tobacco smoke: policy options at EU level”124 and a White Paper on physical

activity and nutrition: “A Strategy for Europe on Nutrition Overweight and Obesity

http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/nutrition/documents/nutrition_wp_en.pdf




activity and nutrition: A Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesityrelated health issues.”125

Objective 6: The Public Health Programmes (PHP) support the establishment of

networks to analyse the existing scientific knowledge and to assess the consistency and

the progress made in the implementation of the Community’s Health and Environment

legislative framework.

In 2006, the REACH Regulation was adopted focusing on gathering information ontoxicological properties of chemicals. Another concrete step forward is the proposeddirective for the sustainable use of pesticides (provisions for banning the use of pesticidesin and around areas where vulnerable groups are more exposed)126.

Objective 7: DG SANCO, along with partner institutions from eleven Member States, hasalso supported the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health in coordinatingthe project ‘Implementing Environment and Health Information System in Europe:

ENHIS’. The aim is to create a comprehensive information and knowledge system togenerate and analyse environmental health information.

Objective 8: In 2005, a consultation exercise on the Green Paper ‘Improving the mental

health of the population – Towards a strategy on mental health for the European Union’

was undertaken127. The results of the consultation exercise provide input for a strategy

on mental health that the EC is developing.


EU competence - this calls for innovative combinations in actions involving all levels,

available mechanisms and relevant actors.

Joint actions and co–operation on health issues across Commission services is overall

fragmented and should be further strengthened.

Setting European targets is only useful in those cases where it is possible to be clear aboutwho delivers the results and how and where comparable data exists.

With regard to PHP, there is risk to the sustainability of the results in the mid and long



















Objective 1: Improving protection against health threats ( ♦♦ )In several Member States, much attention is being placed on the preparedness for

influenza epidemics and pandemic preparedness (Austria, Finland, Hungary, Italy,

Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Sweden). From the literature we know, however, that only

two Member States of the EU25 lack such a preparedness plan129. Countries have also

reported on measures to combat and prevent HIV/AIDS (Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary,

Luxembourg, Romania, Sweden). Spain refers to actions to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria

and tuberculosis in Africa and Latin America. Also, Ireland participates in an

international working group on HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. In some New

Member States, there is a continuous need to focus on tuberculosis (Bulgaria, Estonia,

Lithuania, and Romania). Limited information due to poor reporting on this subject has

taken place by Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia,

Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, and the UK.

Objective 2: Further improving of food and feed legislation ( ♦♦ )

After a number of turbulent years (2002-2004), most Member States prefer to focus onthe implementation of earlier policy initiatives, such as current mandatory food labelling

requirements and eventually introduce legislation on the legibility of labels130. New

initiatives have been recorded in the UK notably, where a food industry sustainability

movements) and vaccination. Active countries in this area are Austria, Belgium, Greece,

Italy, and the UK. Sweden reports on its participation in EU animal health policy, while

various New Member States are implementing legislation in this area (Estonia Malta



various New Member States are implementing legislation in this area (Estonia, Malta,

and Slovenia) as well.

Objectives 4: Curbing increase in lifestyle related diseases ( ♦♦♦ )

Curbing the increase in lifestyle related diseases is a key concern to most Member States.

In the field of physical activity and nutrition, EU Member States recently stated that

‘visible progress, especially relating to children and adolescents, should be achievable in

most countries in the next 4-5 years and it should be possible to reverse the trend by 2015at the latest131. In addition, combating alcohol-related harm is a high priority for the

Member States132.

An increasing number of key initiatives to combat obesity and malnutrition mentioned in

the progress reports focus on awareness and educational programmes targeted at children,

schools and local communities (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy,

Lithuania, and Spain). The UK goes one step further by establishing regional public

health groups that address health determinants within their region – including socio-

economic drivers. Target groups are also used for ongoing initiatives against smoking

and (illegal) drugs, where legislative proposals play a more important role – e.g. to

restrict smoking in public spaces (Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, and

Spain). Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer are also mentioned as lifestyle-related

diseases. Explicit links to national cancer strategies and action plans are made in Cyprus,

Estonia, Hungary, and Luxembourg.

Objective 5: Reducing health inequalities within and between Member States ( ♦ )

Member States appear to be largely unprepared to report on their contribution to this

objective. Clearly, inequalities between Member States are more of a EU than a national

concern. Issues mentioned in this respect are universal access to health insurance

(Estonia, Greece, and Malta) and health care reform (Hungary). Vulnerable groups that

deserve policy attention include HIV patients (Ireland, Italy), minorities (Slovakia) and

disadvantaged socio-economic groups overall (Finland, Spain and UK).

Objective 6: Ensure that chemicals are handled in a safe way by 2020 ( ♦♦♦ )

In 2004, at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, Member

St t d it t t d t i t l h lth h d Th

Objective 7: Improving information on pollution ( ♦♦ )

A range of awareness actions in this area is taken, such as improvement of websites, and

programmes to reduce exposure of children to chemicals (e g Slovakia Sweden)



programmes to reduce exposure of children to chemicals (e.g. Slovakia, Sweden).

Progress has been made in the monitoring of air quality, such as the ozone alarm in

Belgium, Air Quality Index in Hungary, and the Air Quality Strategy in the UK.

Objective 8: Improving mental health and tackling suicide risks ( ♦♦ )Specific actions related to mental health are action plans or national programmes toprevent suicide (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta,

Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, and UK). Reported suicide risks vary strongly betweenMember States and there is no clear evidence from the reports that there is always adirect relation with key policy initiatives to respond to these. Nordic/Baltic countries(other than Sweden) appear to fall somewhat behind in this respect.

b. Latest developments in MS Action

Most Member States have policies to support healthy ageing (i.e. focus on health and

quality of life).

•

Objective 1: Member States have set up influenza preparedness plans. Only twoMember States of the EU25 lack such a plan 134.

• Objective 2: Most Member States prefer to maintain the current mandatory labelling

requirements and eventually introduce legislation on the legibility of labels135.

• Objective 3: Better controls of animal movements and improved controls at

Community borders; vaccination policies.

• Objectives 4 and 5: Combating malnutrition and alcohol-related harm is a high

priority for the Member States.

• Objective 6: In 2004, at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and

Health, Member States made commitments to reduce exposure to environmental

health hazards. The WHO has collected information about how Member States have

been doing since then136.

• At the intergovernmental mid-term review in June 2007, countries reported on the

development of children's environment and health action plans and on the

implementation of actions addressing national priorities and goals established in

2004 such as ensuring safe water, preventing injuries and promoting physicalactivity, ensuring clean air and an environment free from hazardous chemicals137.

c. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?

h i f i ll d d d b b S bli h l h b

Incentives vary, in particular on controversial topics such as reproduction and sexualhealth. Equally, there are also political sensitivities, especially when dealing with

interventions between Member States and not all Member States being open to138



g pinterventions138.

Better inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral cooperation between the energy, transport,industry, agriculture, planning, education and most importantly the finance ministries isneeded to ensure a coherent, well-funded and consistent strategy can be put in place andreal health improvements achieved.

Uptake of the HLY indicator within National or Regional Non-Health Ministries islagging behind use in National or Regional Health Ministries139.


a. Highlights and main conclusions

The EU is facing big challenges related to health determinants: lifestyle; influences

within communities which can sustain or damage health; living and working conditions

and access to health services; and general socio-economic, cultural and environmental

conditions. The emerging challenges are mainly related to the ageing of its population

and the increasing trends in lifestyle related diseases linked with obesity, physical

inactivity, and tobacco and alcohol consumption. There is also evidence that factors such

as particulate matter in the air, noise and ground-level ozone damage the health of

thousands of people every year. Environmental pollutants, including pesticides,

endocrine disruptors, dioxins and PCBs persist in the environment, accumulating overtime and we do not know enough about their long-term effect on health.

There is strong support for the approach proposed by the EC in this area: Taking action

where European added value is clear, and where challenges are of a cross-border nature;

Health in all policies is needed; Ensure preparedness for health threats and protection of

European citizens through enhanced cooperation between the Member States; Using life-

cycle and key setting approaches. Focus on health education to children through schools,information to adults through workplaces and information to the elderly through targeted

tools. And on innovation: more support for health research and for geriatric medicines or

neglected diseases as well as further development in the field of health technology

t

• No clear (process and outcome) indicators/targets are defined in the SDS on public

health;

• Some objectives are related to more than one health indicators (e.g. health













j ( g

determinants: overweight persons, present smokers);

• Health consequences of several environmental hazards are not well understood due to

complex interactions;

• Evidence on (cost-)effective measures is not clear cut in all instances (e.g. awareness

campaigns).

b. Suggestions to restructure/adjust the objective treeObjective 1 (health threats) is also related to Objective 3 (animal health);

Objective 2 (food legislation) is also related to Objective 4 (life-style related disease);

Objective 5 (reduce health inequalities) is also related to Objective 8 (mental health).

c. Recommendations/comments

Develop more quantitative outcome measures to support milestones which could chartprogress towards more general public health measures (such as HLY indicator).

In time, develop a monitoring system providing ongoing routine informationdemonstrating actual progress against anticipated goals.

Increase cross–policy co–operation, horizontal approaches and initiatives to mainstreamhealth in all policies, to tackle specific health determinants and major diseases and to co–ordinate programmes between DGs.

Institutionalise health impact assessment or a similar approach to both mainstream healthand evaluate how other policies affect health.

Co–ordinate better and inform more effectively on all European Community relatedhealth issues to avoid overlaps and improve synergies.

Further coordinated action plans linking health with other policy areas should bedeveloped to exploit synergies and focus efforts.

Reintegrate the policy areas of public health, health and safety at work, social affairs,environmental health and enlargement140.

7. Social inclusion, demography and migration



Overall Objective: To create a socially inclusive society by taking into account solidarity between and within generations and to secure and increase the quality of life of citizens as a precondition for lasting

individual well-being

• Objective 1: Pursuing the EU objective that steps have to be taken to make a decisive impact on the

reduction of the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2010 with a special focus

on the need to reduce child poverty.

• Objective 2: Ensuring a high level of social and territorial cohesion at EU level and in the Member

States as well as respect for cultural diversity.

• Objective 3: Supporting the Member States in their efforts to modernise social protection in view of

demographic changes.

• Objective 4: Significantly increasing the labour market participation of women and older workers

according to set targets, as well as increasing employment of migrants by 2010.

• Objective 5: Continuing developing an EU migration policy, accompanied by policies to strengthen

the integration of migrants and their families, taking into account also the economic dimension of

migration.• Objective 6: Reducing the negative effects of globalisation on workers and their families.

7.1 Main challenges

a. Emerging challenges facing the EU in this area

The main challenge for European citizens is to ensure and increase the quality of life, in

light of the changing demography – in particular the ageing population and increasing

immigration.

The ageing population puts additional strains on Europe's social protection systems. The

old-age dependency ratio (those aged over 65 years as a percentage of the population



aged 15 to 64 years) is increasing, indicating an ageing of the population in the EU25 as a

whole. Eurostat projections show that the ratio will double between 2004 and 2050. By

the middle of the century, there will be one person aged 65 or over for every two aged

between 15 and 64. In the next decades, an ever-smaller working age population will

have to support an ever-greater number of pensioners. Some countries will be confronted

earlier and more strongly by ageing than others. Germany is amongst the fastest ageing

Member States, followed by Italy and Spain.

Figure: Projected proportion of the population aged > 65 in the year 2050 according to various scenarios

Migration poses another fundamental challenge to Europe's future. Overall, immigrationlevels to European countries have been increasing – with about 10% over the years 2004

and 2005, and so have they to other advanced Western nations. Amongst Member States,

the UK, Italy and Spain have been receiving most immigrants. In addition, illegal

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

SE

FI

SK

RO

PT

PL

AT

NL

HU

IT

ES

GR

IE

DE

CZ

BG

BE

provide an additional strain on social security systems – especially those that are more

generous.



b. Key problems and their relations in this area

Europe faces rapid demographic changes – faster than other world regions. During the

period 2005-2050, the median age of the European Union’s population is projected to rise

by 10 years: from 38 to 48 years. The key problem lies in shortages on the labour market

and the affordability of social security systems, especially those of Member states where

pensions are paid out of current accounts (e.g. Belgium, France, Italy).

The relation between ageing and migration is promising – in theory. Immigrants are

often young and could reduce the old-age dependency and help fund the pension systems

of the future. However, there are several problems with this reasoning, notably:

1. Numbers of magnitude: in order to compensate for the decline in the labour force,

European countries would need to attract almost 90 million labour migrants in the

period 2005-2050, or about 1.5 million annually; this could be easily 2 millions per

year. Even though these levels have been attained in the period 2002-2004, they are

about twice the average immigration numbers from the period 1990-2005. It is

highly questionable as to whether Member States could integrate and absorb such

high numbers over longer periods of time, without facing major social and cultural

crises.143

2. Labour market mismatch – labour supply from migrants (often low-skilled) will

differ from the demand (mostly high-skilled).

3. Geographic imbalance – ageing and a shrinking population are strongest in rural and

peripheral regions, while migrants are attracted by larger cities mostly – which havea relatively young population already.

Migrants are often having great difficulties in finding jobs – their unemployment rates are

relatively high and therefore they may draw on welfare more than contribute to it –

depending on the social protection in place.

A further problem relates to the stable numbers of excluded citizens, many of them young

and with income levels at or below the poverty line. Prospects for these excluded citizens

in society in general and on the labour market in particular are limited, as their skill sets

are not sufficiently in demand.

Furthermore, the policy attention to demographic problems is not always translated into

concrete actions. The longer time horizon of these challenges (the 'white elephant') allow

decision-makers to postpone solutions – e.g. when it comes to modernizing social

i d bl i h



protection and notably pension schemes.


a. A view from the professional/academic community

The demographic challenges – related to social protection - give European societies avariety of policy options, each of them with particular pros and cons:

1. Pro-active recruitment of migrant labour and skills; related immigration policies

will have to address potential migrants at working age. If successful, such policies

will inevitably lead to much larger ethno-cultural and religious heterogeneity within

Member States.

2. Rising retirement age; higher labour force participation rates would require a radical

departure from early retirement which in many EU countries has become a

widespread phenomenon. Resistance against such measures is very strong,

especially so amongst organized parts of the labour force (e.g. in France or

Germany);

3. Promote higher birth rates; some European countries (e.g. France, Estonia) are

going quite far in promoting higher birth rates, by providing income subsidies and

child allowances. Short-term effects of these policies are encouraging, especially so

in Estonia, but it is too soon to say what longer term effects will be. Will families

really become larger, or are women simply advancing the moment at which they givebirth?

4. Reform of social protection systems; the reform of social protection systems is

needed, especially in countries where pensions are being paid out of current accounts

(e.g. France, Germany and Belgium).

5. Higher labour force participation of women; in several EU countries there is room

for higher female labour force participation which would require adaptations in the

educational and child care systems allowing mothers to continue their careers. Inmany ways, this policy option is strongly favoured from the perspective of the

Lisbon Agenda as well.

6. Higher labour force participation of disadvantaged groups; a stronger involvement

b. Recent changes in this view

Demographic change and the consequences for society have risen in importance in the

last few years notably. It is also understood to be a cross-cutting theme, which has

impacts on ario s aspects of econom and societ B no it is increasingl



impacts on various aspects of economy and society. By now, it is increasingly

understood that European societies will need to adapt to demographic change – rather

than resist it. Demographic change can also provide opportunities, for instance in areas

such as the 'silver economy'.

Demographic change is increasingly seen as a cross-cutting subject, which is of influence

to many economic, social and environmental themes. As such it is not seen as a separatepillar but a subject that needs to be interwoven with sectoral policies.

Furthermore, there is increasing attention for the need to include local and regional levels

in the demographic debate. Ageing will affect first and above all peripheral and rural

areas, while immigration challenges are strongest in larger cities – and even so in

particular districts145.

7.3 EU action


The European Commission pays growing attention to Europe's changing demography.

Starting with a Green Paper "Confronting demographic change: a new solidarity between

the generations"146, the Commission put the emphasis on the reduction of people of

working age and the fact that by 2030 roughly two active people (15-65) will have to takecare of one inactive person (65+). The subsequent Commission Communication from

2006147 explores types of solutions to adjust to this new reality: Promoting demographic

renewal in Europe, promoting employment; amore productive and competitive Europe;

receiving and integrating immigrants and sustainable public finance.

These responses have more recently (November 2007) been incorporated in the

Commission's "Social vision for a rapidly changing 21

st

century Europe"

148

- whichidentifies the needs for investment in a number of areas, primarily by Member States but

with Europe contributing: youth, career opportunities, longer and healthier lives, gender

equality, inclusion and non-discrimination, mobility and integration, culture, participation


• Most policy responses with regard to the social dimension in general and social

protection systems in particular will need to be taken forward at the level of national

governments and the ability of the EU to action these is limited;



governments, and the ability of the EU to action these is limited;

• The limited progress to date regarding the introduction of a European immigration

policy; despite several policy initiatives taken by the Commission, real progress on

the ground is still rather limited to date; it is difficult to formulate a European policy

in an area where realities, issues, and political views across Member States are so

different;

• As a consequence of this, limited co-ordination action is taken at the EU level to dateto attract highly qualified migrants to Europe – and to convincingly engage in a

battle for talent which will need to be held to develop the future European

knowledge society;

• The fragmented response to ageing; this is clearly a cross-cutting topic that will

influence various domains of EU action (e.g. transport, housing, labour markets,

education, health, rural and regional development);

• Limited involvement from local and regional governments and actors in addressing

the demographic challenges.

c. Positioning the EU in a broader international context

The challenges as portrayed above are particularly strong in the EU, especially

concerning the ageing and the affordability of social protection systems which are

advanced in Europe. The US, Canada and Australia are known to have historically high

levels of immigration and absorption capacity. Particular concerns vis-à-vis the European

situation are the fact that:• The European population will age much faster than that in the US, Canada and

Australia notably;

• Adjustments to demographic change are relatively slow, as the necessary

modernization of social protection and pension systems is falling behind reality in

many European countries; other OECD countries have less developed and therefore

less rigid protection systems;

• In Europe, the gap between immigrants and second generation citizens on the one

hand and native citizens on the other hand is larger in terms of education and

employment levels149.



♦ li it d/ (< 10 t i )




♦♦ = medium coverage (about 10-/20 countries)




1. What are the latest developments in MS Action to tackle the challenge/problem?2. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?



This theme is clearly targeting the social pillar of EU SDS and therefore different in

nature and aspiration. Some countries (Denmark, Poland) consider this theme not to bepart of their own SDS policy.


Objective 1: Reduce the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by

2010, focusing on child poverty ( ♦♦♦ )

Most Member States report on their commitment to combat poverty, especially so

amongst children. The common key policy response lies in targeting families as a whole,

and offering them social protection, including income subsidies, housing subsidies andminimum wage levels. In addition, action plans for social inclusion are frequently

mentioned. Behind these commonalities, differences between Member States are still

strong. Various New Member States are still facing deep pockets of poverty and welfare

systems are often young and under development.

Objective 2: Ensure a high level of territorial cohesion and respect for cultural diversity

( ♦

)Only few Member States report on this objective, which includes both territorial cohesion

(e.g. amongst and between urban and rural areas in France, Hungary) as well as

promoting cultural diversity (e.g. Ireland). A particularly comprehensive approach in this

Objective 4: Significantly increase the labour market participation of women and older

workers as well as migrants ( ♦♦ )

This objective commonly fits within broader labour market strategies that are often

packaged in National Employment Action Plans already. Limited evidence could be



packaged in National Employment Action Plans already. Limited evidence could be

found that the EU SDS leads to new key policy initiatives – in addition to sector policies

already in place. The importance of this objective is underlined by independent research

stating that an increase in overall labour market participation is strongly dependent on the

ability to include female workers. This objective also demonstrates clear synergies with

the Lisbon Strategy – which adds to its weight.

Objective 5: Develop an EU migration policy – including attention to the economic

dimension of migration ( ♦ )

Countries are reporting to only a limited extent on this objective, often by referring to EC

directives (Greece, Slovakia) or by mentioning national initiatives such as the Irish

Immigration Protection Bill which represents and overhaul of the country's immigration

and protection laws. Limited or no evidence exists about the added value of the EU SDS

in this respect.

Objective 6: Reduce negative effects of globalisation on workers ( ♦ )

Reporting on the objective to reduce negative effects of globalisation on workers is

almost non-existent, apart from France and Finland. For most Member States, this

objective appears to be not concrete or clear enough to provide a basis for reporting.

Objective 7: Promote increased employment of young people ( ♦ )

Unemployment among young people varies strongly within the EU and some countrieswhich are facing important challenges in this area (e.g. France, Germany) report on the

subject. Typical elements of active labour market policy – often supported by Structural

Funds - include training (Germany), apprenticeships (France), or job guarantees

(Sweden). Limited or no evidence exists about the added value of the EU SDS in this

respect. Quite often, unemployment amongst young males correlates with crime

incidents, especially when concentrated in specific urban neighbourhoods.

Objective 8: Increase labour market participation of disabled people ( ♦♦ )

Member States are clearly concerned and committed to this objective, and reporting is

more comprehensive. Typical actions include both labour market and welfare measures.

T d d ti f l i i l l Li it d id i t

• Netherlands has organised a Participation Summit (June 2007), that has led to

concrete agreements to increase labour participation by various groups of society

(Objective 4);

• Ireland has overhauled its immigration and protection laws through its Immigration



g p g g

Protection Bill 2007 (Objective 5);

• United Kingdom has introduced a New Deal for Young People, aiming to help

850,000 people with a job (Objective 8).

c. Main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action

•

A number of solutions to reducing the risk of poverty and social exclusion go in thedirection of traditional subsidies to the poor, especially so in the EU-12 where these

instruments are still being developed; the effectiveness of this solution alone can be

questioned as it could promote poor citizens to fall in a welfare 'trap'.

• Many policy initiatives related to the modernisation of social protection and pension

systems are still in an early phase; finding agreements in parliaments and in society

overall can be very difficult and it is therefore likely that a number of these policy

initiatives will need to be withdrawn.



The main challenge for European citizens is to ensure and increase the quality of life, in

light of the changing demography – in particular the ageing population and increasing

immigration.

Although the social dimension of sustainable development is not considered opportune by

some Member States (e.g. Denmark, Poland), most countries provide reasonably

comprehensive reporting in this area. The importance of demographic change, social

protection and immigration are increasingly recognised as themes that are vital for

Europe's future. Most attention goes to the reduction of poverty and active labour market

policies – promoting the inclusion of various target groups (older workers, younger

workers, migrants, women and the disabled); this is an important objective not only from

the point of EU SDS but also from the perspective of the Lisbon Strategy and deserves

full support from many perspectives (perhaps apart from sustainable transport angle as it

which opens again a completely different set of policies that prevents the EU SDS from

focus.

When restructuring the SDS, a stronger focus on a restricted number of objectives appear



to be most crucial for retention, namely:

• Reduce the risk of poverty an social exclusion, focusing on child poverty;

• Modernise social protection in view of demographic change;

• Increase overall labour market participation (including females, younger, older,

disabled, migrants);

•

Develop an EU migration policy – including the need to strengthen participation of migrants in social and economic life.

c. Recommendations/comments

Limited or no evidence exists about the added value of the EU SDS in this respect

compared to already existing sectoral (social policies). A positive contribution of the

Structural Funds can be discerned in this area, as the Operational Programmes on Human

Resources have a direct link with several of the EU SDS objectives. This link could be

made more explicit.

A stronger focus on the four objectives mentioned above appears to be pivotal to

progress.

8. Global poverty and sustainable development

challenges



Overall objective: To actively promote sustainable development worldwide and ensure that

the European Union’s internal and external policies are consistent with

global sustainable development and its international commitments

• Objective 1: Make significant progress towards meeting the commitments of the EU with regard to

internationally agreed goals and targets, in particular those contained in the Millennium Declaration

and those deriving from The World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in2002 and related processes such as the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, the

Doha Development Agenda and the Paris Declaration on Aid Harmonisation.

• Objective 2: Contribute to improving international environmental governance (IEG), in particular in

the context of the follow-up to the 2005 World Summit outcome, and to strengthening multilateral

environmental agreements (MEAs).

• Objective 3: Raise the volume of aid to 0,7% of Gross National Income (GNI) by 2015 with an

intermediate target of 0,56% in 2010, Member States which have not yet reached a level of 0,51%

ODA/GNI undertake to reach, within their respective budget allocation processes, that level by 2010,

while those that are already above that level undertake to sustain their efforts; Member States which

have joined the EU after 2002 and that have not reached a level of 0,17% ODA/GNI will strive to

increase their ODA to reach, within their respective budget allocation processes, that level by 2010,

while those that are already above that level undertake to sustain their efforts; Member States

undertake to achieve the 0,7% ODA/GNI target by 2015 whilst those which have achieved that target

commit themselves to remain above that target; Member States which joined the EU after 2002 will

strive to increase by 2015 their ODA/GNI to 0,33%.• Objective 4: Promote sustainable development in the context of the WTO negotiations, in accordance

with the preamble to the Marrakech Agreement establishing the World Trade Organisation which sets

sustainable development as one of i ts main objectives.

8.1 Main challenges

a. Emerging challenges

The key challenge is to actively promote sustainable development worldwide and ensure



that the European Union's internal and external policies are consistent with global

sustainable development and its international commitments. It includes the target to

make significant progress of the EU with regard to internationally agreed goals and

targets, in particular those contained in the Millennium Declaration – such as the aim to

reduce the number of people who live on less then $ 1 per day by 2010. Aims that

contribute to this ambitious goal are to raise the volume of aid as a % of GNP and toimprove the quality of aid.

Measuring the progress towards reaching the Millennium Goals is not an easy task, as

these are very broad and as many countries lack the data to monitor progress. Therefore,

in monitoring progress towards the Millennium Goals, the World Bank has opted for a

number of key objectives, namely:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;

2. Achieve universal and primary proportion of countries on their way to half poverty

by 2015;

3. Promote gender equality and empower women;

4. Reduce child mortality;

5. Reduce maternal mortality by three quarters;

6. Ensure environmental sustainability150.

Nevertheless, the overview provided by the World Bank suggests that these goals are outof reach for the poorest countries. Poverty eradication is making progress in Latin

America and Southern Asia, but much less so in Africa. More progress is made on

universal education, especially so in Asia and Latin America, but there is hardly any

progress in Sub-Saharan Africa. Latin America makes progress again on gender equality,

and so does East Asia & the Pacific. Sub-Saharan Africa also falls much behind the aim

to reduce child mortality and maternal mortality – areas where other parts of the

developing world show much more progress. Access to water and sanitation is improving

in Latin America and South Asia notably, while various parts of Africa fall behind in this

area as well.

Table: Progress towards the Millennium Goals



Another aim of the EU SDS is to promote sustainable development worldwide. However

the global environmental challenges appear to be mounting. There is increasing evidencethat developing countries are likely to suffer from climate change in more than one

t Cli t h i l d lik l t d i f d d ti i th d l i



respect. Climate change is already likely to undermine food production in the developing

world, as crop yield potential is likely to decline as a consequence of global temperature

rises151.

A recent OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2007-2016 report152 adds to this that growingbiofuel demand is likely to raise commodity prices in a 'food versus fuel' issues, withdetrimental effects for food importing countries notably. The International Grain Councilreports that the world's grain stocks (corn, wheat, barley) are approaching their lowestlevels since the 1970s, due in part by the soaring demand for biofuels. Increases in cocoaprices have been recorded as well.

The increasing demand for biofuels globally may also lead to serious environmental andsocial problems. Biofuel crops thrive best in tropical climates and the pressure ondeforestation in countries such as Brazil is mounting. Peasants have been evicted from

their land for as well, together with traditional crops153.

The EU is expected to contribute to addressing these challenges by including sustainable

development concerns in all EU external policies especially in the context of WTO

negotiations.


The fundamental problem in the area of global poverty and sustainable developmentseems to be twofold. Firstly, the scale and scope of the problem: the effects of global

warming on developing countries are of a scale beyond the intervention power of any

single nation and the longer term effects are very uncertain.

A second key problem lies in the tensions between developmental goals – taking into

account the still expected population growth, the related demand for resources and the

environmental concerns. The Millennium Goals themselves are largely contradictory;

economic development needed to alleviate poverty will lead to an increase in industrialoutputs, consumption of cereals and meat and above all mobility. Reconciling these aims

in an effective way is a vast challenge.


Vi f th f i l/ d i it




Increasing attention is now also put on the need to increase the quality of aid. In 2005,the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness was endorsed – based on the principles of ownership, alignment, harmonisation, management for results and mutual accountability.A first baseline report154 points to the large number of actors with competing objectives,the donor driven nature of much support, the need to strengthen country ownership and

the need to strengthen performance assessment frameworks. Ambitious reforms arecalled for – both by donors and partners – not least to defend the scaling up of aid as partof the Millennium Declaration.

It is increasingly understood that not only aid, but also trade is of key significance toeconomic development and poverty eradication. In the area of trade liberalisation, themulti-lateral institution WTO is the recognised body for further progress.

b. Recent changes in this view

It is increasingly understood that global poverty, economic development, social aspects

and environmental concerns need to be seen in a broader and holistic perspective. The

belief in simple and straightforward solutions has decreased over time and the recognition

that there is a strong need for strategic, longer term approaches which are taken forward

by developing countries themselves – with the support of donors.

Although the attention to climate change and the impact on global development isimportant and positive, an increasing number of experts are concerned about the danger

of simplification; other sustainable development concerns (e.g. biodiversity, consumption

and production, public health, natural resources, social dimension) need to receive full

attention as well. An increasing need for sustainable development impact assessments,

which can make explicit the intended and unintended consequences of policy proposals.

8.3 EU action


EU l li i i i i l d i ifi d h l

tariffs. Progress on the Doha Round has been limited only, especially after the June2007 Potsdam conference, where a major impasse occurred between the US, the EU,

India and Brazil156

;• Efforts to link the environment with trade are being strengthened. The European

Commission has been promoting Trade Sustainability Impact Assessments for some157



time now, and a Handbook to this end has recently been prepared157.


Key concerns relate to effectiveness of aid – in light of the increased support levels. The2006 Survey on Monitoring the Paris Declaration showed for instance that:

• The cost of uncoordinated aid is very high; there are too many actors with competingobjectives, especially in the poorest and most aid-dependent countries, leading tohigh transaction costs;

• There is still slow progress in untying of aid an technical co-operation is still toomuch donor-driven;

• Good headquarters policies are not always matched by in-country practices;

• There is a need to strengthen country ownership; mainly a partner responsibility,donors can assist by capacity development and alignment on country programmes

and systems;• A lot of work needs to be done in managing for results; mutual accountability, calls

for performance assessment frameworks and improved incentive systems in bothpartner and donor countries158.

A further concern lies in the impact of various Commission policies on development,

notably the Common Agricultural Policy and in certain cases trade liberalisation.

c. Positioning the EU in this respect in a broader international contextEU Member States comply relatively well with the Official Development Assistants(ODA) objectives as set by the UN at 0.7% of GNI by 2015. Overall, development aidfrom OECD countries fell by 5.1% in 2006, which is related to the exceptionally highODA in 2005 due to large Paris Club debt relief – notably for Iraq and Nigeria.

For the EU15 as a whole, the 2006 ODA level amounted to 0.43% of GNP (compared to0.43% in 2005), slightly above the target that EU Members had set themselves for the

year 2006. Currently, the 0.7 level is within the EU only met by Sweden, the Netherlandsand Denmark. In 2006, significant increases in ODA from EU Member States came fromcountries that have relatively low ODA levels (Ireland (+34%), Spain (+20%) but also bySweden (+15%), and the UK (+13%). ODA levels are increasing in New Member States




♦♦ = medium coverage (about 10 /20 countries)



♦♦ = medium coverage (about 10-/20 countries)




1. What are the latest developments in MS Action to tackle the challenge/problem?2. What are the main concerns about the effectiveness of MS action?



a. Progress by Objective

Objective 1: Make significant progress toward meeting the commitments with regard to

international goals (especially Millennium Declaration) ( ♦♦ )

Despite the political importance attached to this objective, only a limited number of

countries report about concrete key policy initiatives in this area. Clearly, the Millennium

Goals as such are difficult to monitor and live up to in practice as they are very broad in

nature. In this respect, the Netherlands reports about the need to strengthen the coherence

between various international goals. Germany reports about a 2015 Programme of Action

including ten priority areas for the fight against poverty, which go beyond the Millennium

Goals, while Greece has introduced a breakdown of its development budget byMillennium Goal.

Objective 2: Improve international environmental governance (IEG) ( ♦♦ )

A large number of Member States is committed to this objective, specifically by

supporting to develop a UN Environmental Organisation (UNEO) as a further

development of UNEP. Leading in this area are France, Sweden and UK, with support

from Italy and Luxembourg. Some countries (e.g. Netherlands, Estonia) call for support

to a Global Environmental Facility as the key international source to fund environmental

improvements.

Objective 4: Promote sustainable development in context of WTO ( ♦ )

Explicit reference to the Doha Development Round is expressed by only a handful of

countries, while national reports often fail to grasp the latest state of play in this area(latest WTO initiatives following the Potsdam failure). Denmark announces concrete

initiatives to better link trade and environment – within WTO and beyond, while France



y ,

is supportive of environmental social aspects of the WTO dossier. Spain has taken

forward actions to better coordinate trade, aid and human interventions.

Objective 5: Increase effectiveness of aid policies ( ♦ )

Despite overall commitment to the Paris Declaration, only few key policy actions havebeen specifically mentioned in this area. Sweden makes reference to a range of actions in

support of the Paris Declaration, while Finland is involved in innovative funding and debt

relief initiatives. Overall, larger donors appear to be more committed to this objective for

understandable reasons (including Luxembourg). Aid effectiveness is also considered

important by New Member States which are building up their development policies and

agencies (e.g. Slovak Agency for International Development).

Objective 6: Include SD concerns in all EU external policies ( ♦♦ )Member States show their commitment to this objective through various ways. Helping

to build capacity for chemicals management in developing countries (Austria, Sweden),

the integration of climate issues in foreign policy (Denmark, Finland) or by including SD

concerns in regional strategies – e.g. the Mediterranean strategy on SD that was adopted

through French support or the Black Sea Economic Co-operation (Greece).

b. Latest developments in Member State actionWhile the importance of integrating SD concerns in international co-operation is

undisputed, the theme is very broad and Member States tend to focus on those aspects

that they can influence most directly or that closest to their heart. For instance several

New Member States – in the process of building up their development aid – are

committed to transformation co-operation (Czech Republic) and democracy and human

rights in CIS countries (Lithuania, Estonia). Many countries focus geographically on

their traditional areas of support. Large aid donors clearly take more policy initiatives

while new Member States have the opportunity to build SD concerns into their emergingdevelopment policies.

M i b t th ff ti f MS ti



The fundamental problem in the area of global poverty and sustainable development



The fundamental problem in the area of global poverty and sustainable development

seems to be twofold. Firstly, the scale and scope of the problem: the effects of global

warming on developing countries are of a scale beyond the intervention power of any

single nation and the longer term effects are very uncertain. A second key problem lies in

the tensions between developmental goals – taking into account the still expected

population growth, the related demand for resources and the environmental concerns.The Millennium Goals themselves are largely contradictory; economic development

needed to alleviate poverty will lead to an increase in industrial outputs, consumption of

cereals and meat and above all mobility. Reconciling these aims in an effective way is a

vast challenge.

Despite the overall commitment to actively promote sustainable development worldwide

and ensure that the EU's internal and external policies are consistent with global

sustainable development, the impression that emerges from the national reports is that this

objective is far beyond the scope of individual Member States attention. An overall

statement about the progress on this objective is therefore not possible. Member States

tend to focus on specific themes or geographic regions that are particularly important to

them – which may lead to a rather patchy approach and not necessarily a good basis for

monitoring overall progress in this area. A broad support basis is therefore emerging

amongst MS for the establishment of a UN Environmental Organisation. Within the light

of expected and targeted increases in ODA, a stronger emphasis on the effectiveness andefficiency of such aid would have been expected (Paris Declaration). Those Member

States that are currently building up their external development aid strategies have a

unique opportunity to include the SD dimension immediately – yet there is little sign that

this is actually happening.

Beyond the horizon lie new and complex challenges – the social and environmental

impact of the demand for bio-fuels, the increased demand for commodities from

emerging markets and their interrelations.


c. Recommendations/comments on the theme

A need to focus on the objectives and to distinguish between wider objectives (beyond

the reach of the EU as a whole) and specific objectives (referring to EU objectives).



the openness of systems and institutions to society and the wider world. Member States could develop

education for sustainable development and targeted training for professions in key sectors such as

construction, energy and transport. Special attention should be devoted to teacher training. They should

also implement the UNECE Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development adopted in Vilnius in 2005.

Education for sustainable development should also be promoted at EU level. The European Parliament and



the Council will adopt an integrated action programme in the field of lifelong learning for 2007-2013 in

2006.

a. EU action

Combining consideration for social justice, environmental compatibility and economicgrowth, education lies at the heart of sustainable development. Therefore, Education for

Sustainable Development (ESD) plays a key role in triggering the intellectual and

behavioural changes required to bring about a shift towards more sustainable

development patterns. In the international context, the UN "Decade of Education for

Sustainable Development (2005-2014)" (DESD) provides the overarching policy

framework. The overall goal of the DESD is to integrate the principles, values, and

practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning.

The key EU document in the area of education is the "Education and Training 2010"

work programme159. It represents the EU's education and training policy contribution to

the Lisbon Strategy and – among other objectives – aims at improving the quality and

effectiveness of education and training systems in the EU, and at making education in the

EU more inclusive, by widening participation and promoting equity. As a result of the

work programme, the new Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP)160, adopted in October

2006, has been brought on the way. The LLP integrates the EU's various educational andtraining initiatives under a single umbrella. The second call for proposals under the

different lines of the new programme was launched in late 2007. To "reinforce

sustainable development, including issues relating to energy and climate change, through

actions in all sectors of education and training"161 is one of the strategic priority areas of

the programme for the period from 2008-2010. Environmental learning and education

also forms part of the agenda of some of the LLP sub-programmes like Leonardo da

Vinci (vocational education and training), the Comenius action (school education), as

well as Grundtvig (adult education).

Another EU-level education initiative that relates to SD, the new "European

Q lifi i F k f lif l l i "162 (EQF) ffi i ll l h d 26

example, by making it easier for people to move between different types of education and

training institutions.

b. Member State action

Education and training is among the cross-cutting themes that have received considerable

tt ti i th t O ll b d th t it l k l i



attention in the progress reports. Overall, a broad consensus that it plays a key role in

achieving a shift towards more sustainable development is reflected in the reporting. The

notion that it is essential to "promote behavioural changes and provide all citizens with

key competences needed to achieve a sustainable development"163 is generally well

captured. However, the dominant stream of reporting shows a strong focus on school

education and a certain neglect of adult- and continuing education, as well as vocational

education and training. In many reports, the role education and training are to play in the

concept of SD is merely confined to teaching about the environment and the importance

of its preservation. This approach does not sufficiently acknowledge the breadth of the

SD concept. This may also account for the fact that in many cases MS are not reporting

on measures undertaken and progress achieved in the areas of teacher training and equal

opportunities, as well as ICT skills and regional divides. However, these are the

components that distinguish the broader SD approach from a more narrow environmentalprotection approach.

In many cases, detailed information that would allow for putting a certain initiative into

perspective (e.g. scope and timeframe of a policy measure) is not given in the reports.

This makes it essentially hard to determine to what extent a certain initiative contributes

to reaching the goals of the EU Strategy. On the whole, efforts to promote the concept of

SD through education and training are made in all MS who report on this theme. Thedepth and stage of implementation of these initiatives, however, differs widely. While in

some MS aspects of SD already form part of the nationwide curriculum on various levels

of education for years, others are still at the stage of developing curricula and are just

about to introduce the concept into teacher training. Austria, Denmark and Finland are

examples of MS where ESD has been incorporated into education and training to a

relatively high degree. In most cases, however, the reports are dominated by information

on pilot projects and other exercises of rather limited scope.

Though the short period between the introduction of the EU SDS and the first round of

progress reports only allows for very limited direct comparison of the progress made on a

t b t b i l t t t i f b

9.2 Research and development

Research into sustainable development must include short-term decision support projects and long-term

visionary concepts and has to tackle problems of a global and regional nature. It has to promote inter- and

transdisciplinary approaches involving social and natural sciences and bridge the gap between science,



policy-making and implementation. The positive role of technology for smart growth has to be further

developed. There is still a strong need for further research in the interplay between social, economic and

ecological systems, and in methodologies and instruments for risk analysis, back- and forecasting and

prevention systems.

It is key in that regard to ensure effective implementation of the 7th Framework Programme of the

European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities, involving

academia, industry and policy-makers and to advance the implementation of the Environmental Technology

Action Plan.

For better understanding of interlinkages between the three dimensions of SD, the core system of national

income accounting could be extended by inter alia integrating stock and flow concepts and non-market work

and be further elaborated by satellite accounts e.g. environmental expenditures, material flows and taking

into consideration international best practices.

Universities, research institutes and private enterprises all have an essential role to play in promoting

research that supports efforts to ensure that economic growth and environmental protection reinforce each

other. Universities and other higher education institutions have a key role in providing education and

training that equip the qualified workforce with the necessary competences to fully develop and exploit

sustainable technologies. They should also contribute to low environmental impact management throughinterdisciplinary approaches and by building on existing networks. Creation of partnerships and

cooperation between European and third country universities and higher education institutions,

encouraging networking and peer learning, should be promoted.

a. EU action

The difficult task of reconciling high levels of employment and a high standard of living

with sustainable development can only be achieved through a shift from a resource-

intensive to a knowledge-intensive economy. Therefore, research and development not

only play a key role in making the EU more competitive in the Lisbon Strategy, but also

based in situ monitoring facilities, the system will make it easier to assess environmental

impacts and also provide forecasting services as well as mapping support for emergency

management.

The Seventh Framework Programme FP7, the EU's flagship programme in the area of

research and development funding for the period from 2007 2013 provides € 1 9 billion



research and development funding for the period from 2007-2013, provides € 1.9 billion

for research into environmental issues under its "Cooperation" funding line165. FP7 also

funds the Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC)166 tasked with providing scientific

and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of

EU policies. The JRC provides important inputs in the SD area through the Institute for

Environment and Sustainability (IES), the Institute for Energy (IE) and the Institute for

Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS).

Another EU funding programme relevant to sustainable development is the

Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) which, in contrast to FP7, focuses on

the innovation activities of European companies. The IEE (Intelligent Energy Europe)167

funding line provides financial support for R&D activities in the areas of renewable

energy, energy efficiency as well as new energy sources in transport. The budgetavailable for the period from 2007-2013 is € 730 million.


The EU SDS defines the role of research and development in sustainable development in

a broad way and stresses the "strong need for further research in the interplay between

social, economic and ecological systems"168. However, this broad approach only found

entry into about half of the MS progress reports. While virtually all MS assign great

importance to research and development in the field of renewable energy, energy saving,

as well as transport technology, the wider context of SD receives insufficient attention.

This narrow focus on supporting research into new technologies does not do justice to the

concept of SD and this section should not be confined to the creation and availability of

technology and knowledge, but also include scientific research concerning its usage and

uptake. A meaningful interlinkage of natural and social sciences to further the cause of

SD is only pursued by few MS. Furthermore the Strategy's call for research into

improved risk-assessment methodologies remains largely unaddressed.

Apart from few exceptions, there is also broad neglect of the Strategy's call for research

i t i t l ti / t d th i i i ti i t

The fact that this knowledge and expertise is not only applied internally, but also made

available to international organisations and other interested states is a good example of

best practice in this area169

. Germany's FONA research for sustainability framework programme170 that brings together a wide range of scientific disciplines is another

initiative with model character171. Next to its considerable funding base,

multidisciplinary approach and international dimension it also seeks to involve



multidisciplinary approach and international dimension, it also seeks to involve

businesses, training providers as well as management and labour organisations.

9.3 Financing and economic instruments

The EU will seek to use the full range of policy instruments in the implementation of its policies. The most

appropriate economic instruments should be used to promote market transparency and prices that reflect

the real economic, social and environmental costs of products and services (getting prices right). Their

potential to reconcile environmental protection and smart economic growth and exploit win-win

opportunities should be recognised. Additionally, their suitability should be judged against a set of criteria,

including their impact on competitiveness and productivity.

Member States should consider further steps to shift taxation from labour to resource and energy

consumption and/or pollution, to contribute to the EU goals of increasing employment and reducing

negative environmental impacts in a cost-effective way. In this context, the Commission should gather

relevant information by 2007.

By 2008, the Commission should put forward a roadmap for the reform, sector by sector, of subsidies that

have considerable negative effects on the environment and are incompatible with sustainable development,with a view to gradually eliminating them.

In order to ensure that EU funding is used and channelled in an optimum way to promote sustainable

development, Member States and the Commission should co-ordinate to enhance complementarities and

synergies between various strands of Community and other cofinancing mechanisms such as cohesion

policy, rural development, Life+, Research and Technological Development (RTD), the Competitiveness

and Innovation Program (CIP) and the European Fisheries Fund (EFF).

a. EU action

management, protection of biodiversity and reduction of air pollution. In the area of

climate change mitigation, the EU has identified the use of market based instruments as

the most important regulatory approach to reducing anthropogenic GHG emissions.

In the area of better regulation and policy integration, the Commission's system of

integrated regulatory impact assessment was put in place to ensure policy coherence and



teg ated egu ato y pact assess e t was put p ace to e su e po cy co e e ce a d

to avoid unnecessary regulatory burden. An independent review of the Commission's

impact assessment system173, published in April 2007, came to the conclusion that the

Commission's overall approach to the three dimensions of impact assessment was

"balanced". However, it also found that "because of the difficulty of identifying and

quantifying certain types of impacts, the analysis of economic impacts is often more

developed and concrete than the analysis of social or environmental impacts". This

means that in practice the environmental and the social pillar are often undermined by a

lack of methodologies and unavailability of data.


As concerns the usage of "economic instruments" to promote SD, nearly all Member

States report an increase or the introduction of taxes related to resource consumption andpollution. Elements of environmental tax reform were explicitly implemented in

Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia and in the

United Kingdom. However, information on the usage of extra income levied by these

taxes is patchy and only a handful of states report an actual structural shift in taxation

from labour to resource and energy usage, as called for in the EU SDS. Finland and

Austria are two of these few exceptions. While environmental and especially energy

taxation is on the rise, there are no clear signs that the average level of direct taxation,

especially on labour, is actually declining174. Additionally, the prospect of structurally

higher world energy prices in certain cases seems to have lead to somewhat reduced

appetite towards market-based instruments affecting energy prices.

Efforts to "reflect the real economic, social and environmental costs of products and

services"175 are also made in form of financial incentive / disincentive schemes to

encourage the adoption of new eco-friendly technology (e.g. particle filters in diesel cars).

The objective of enhancing "complementarities and synergies between various strands of Community and other co-financing mechanisms through better coordination" is only

touched on in most reports. The progress reports addressing this element of the EU SDS

t l b t t d l i it f t t id i f ti t

9.4 Communication, mobilising actors and multiplying success

The Commission will mainstream sustainable development in its information, awareness raising

and communication activities and continue, together with other Community institutions, to

organise events and stakeholder meetings on the various strands of the strategy, to disseminate

new ideas and exchange best practices In this context the Commission should produce a



new ideas and exchange best practices. In this context the Commission should produce a

layman's guide to this strategy, including good practice and good policies in Member States, to

help increase public awareness of sustainable development. Use should be made of valuable

communication tools to measure the impacts of human activities on the earth's capacity to

support life in its diversity.

The Commission should elaborate a concrete and realistic vision of the EU on its way to

sustainable development over the next 50 years. Such a vision should be prepared in a

participatory manner and should identify the main long term objectives and describe

intermediate stages and steps towards their achievement.

Member States have the key role in targeting communication to the most appropriate level.

With regard to the important role of local and regional levels in delivering sustainable

development and building up social capital, it is the overall aim to build sustainable communities

in urban and rural areas where citizens live and work and jointly create a high quality of life.

Approaches like Local Agenda 21 and other processes with broad public participation must be

further strengthened and promoted. Municipalities, cities and towns should be invited to sign

and implement the Aalborg Commitments. Networks at different levels should support these

activities.

In this connection the Commission is invited to elaborate possible options of how to promote the “European

Sustainable Cities & Towns Campaign” which provides an exchange of good practice including the

elaboration of quality criteria, indicators and instruments like impact assessment. The best sustainable

development initiatives taken by regional and local authorities will be awarded prizes on an annual basis.

The Commission will invite proposals from other EU institutions and organisations on how best to organise

this.

Business leaders and other key stakeholders including workers' organisations and nongovernmental

organisations should engage in urgent reflection with political leaders on the medium- and long-term

a. EU action

Engaging the public through effective communication and making European citizens part

of the SD policy process is crucial to the success of the EU SDS. Only where a feeling of co-ownership of the Strategy can be developed and where a critical mass of people and

societal groups start identifying with the concept of SD can real progress be achieved. In

this context, the European Commission has the task to mainstream sustainable



development in its information, awareness raising and communication activities and also

to organise events and stakeholder meetings dealing with all key aspects of SD.

As requested in the EU SDS, the Commission has recently finished its work on a

layman's guide to Sustainable Development which is about to be published. The guideincludes information on all the seven challenges of the Strategy and provides informationon key EU policies and informs citizens how they can contribute to sustainabledevelopment. Additionally, the Commission seeks to deliver on SD trough approachessuch as Local Agenda 21, concerning SD at the local level, and the AalborgCommitments (shared European SD Commitments).


Naturally, the Member States play the key role in communicating the importance of

sustainable development to the European public. In order to be effective, this process

should be targeted to the most appropriate level, which will often be a regional or local

one. Since the shift towards sustainable development necessarily involves trade-offs

among environmental, economic and social objectives, which cannot be taken by

governments alone, Member States must also make every effort to involve all relevant

stakeholders in this process. However, the extent of stakeholder involvement varies

substantially between MS. While many countries introduced ad hoc participationprocesses, where stakeholders were consulted in the development of the NSDS,

stakeholders are to a lesser extent involved regarding implementation and further

development of the strategies.

Some countries include stakeholders in special commissions and councils which provide

advice to but are separate from the government bodies which implement the strategy.

These include the Federal Sustainable Development Council (CFDD) in Belgium, the

National Council for Sustainable Development (CNDD) in France, the Council on

Sustainable Development (RNE) in Germany, the National Sustainable Development

Council in Ireland as well as the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) in the UK.

The quality and scope of the reporting under this theme is quite diverse. While some MS

go a long way in describing numerous campaigns and initiatives, others, Denmark for

example, do not report on this theme at all. Even more than under other cross cuttingthemes, the link between the activities mentioned and the goals and measures put forward

in the EU SDS seem particularly weak in this area. A clear rationale how communication

and the involvement of various groups of actors can contribute to progress in the SD area



is almost entirely missing. However, it has to be kept in mind that the EU SDS only

offers relatively limited guidance and orientation under this heading. On the whole, no

MS succeeds in outlining a coherent overall strategy as to how large parts of the

population and all relevant groups of actors (especially businesses, social partner

organisations and other societal interest groups) can be reached and involved. As a

consequence, MS frequently report on a range of rather limited and seemingly unrelated

communication campaigns that address certain elements of SD and not the concept as a

whole. Overall, few MS really seem to have the strong ambition to enhance public

perception and participation in SD issues on a broad scale.

9.5 Implementation, monitoring and follow-up

The Commission will submit every two years (starting in September 2007) a progress report on

implementation of the SDS in the EU and the Member States also including future priorities, orientations

and actions. As for the monitoring at EU level, the Commission will, in analysing the state of play with

regard to the challenges described above, draw on a comprehensive set of sustainable development

indicators (SDIs), taking into account the EUROSTAT SD Monitoring Report, to be updated every two

years, as well as on the latest scientific evidence and on developments in relation to key EU activities(strategies, action plans, legislation).

To ensure both a comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the complexity of sustainable development, the

indicators are to be developed at the appropriate level of detail to ensure proper assessment of the situation

with regard to each particular challenge.

The Commission, in cooperation with Member States through the working group on SDIs, will further

develop and review indicators to increase their quality and comparability as well as their relevance to the

renewed EU SDS, also taking into account other indicator initiatives and focusing on those indicators

marked as most needed.



a. EU action

Implementation, follow-up and reporting play a very important role in turning the EU'sand the Member States' commitment to sustainable development, as expressed in the EU

SDS and the NSDSs, into actual progress on the ground. The EU SDS assigns the

responsibility of keeping track of progress to the Commission who, based on the reports

b i d b h MS d h E C il f h fi i i l 2007 d



submitted by the MS, reported to the European Council for the first time in late 2007, and

will do so again in 2009 and 2011. Internal responsibility for the EUSDS and all

reporting duties connected to it lie with the Secretariat-General of the Commission. Since

the Secretariat-General's key task is to ensure the overall coherence of the Commission’s

work this seems to be an appropriate decision from an organisational standpoint.

The effectiveness of an SD strategy in achieving its objectives should be monitored

continuously with a set of SD indicators and be reviewed/evaluated in regular intervals.

The results of this process should be considered in the continuous adjustment and the

cyclical renewal of an SD strategy so that evidence-based policy learning takes place.

Therefore, EUROSTAT also plays an important role in the Commission's SD work and is

tasked with further developing a set of sustainable development indicators (SDI) incooperation with the Member States. To this end a working group on SDIs, composed of

both statistical and political representatives at national and EU level, was set up. The

group regularly assesses the progress made in developing new and better indicators. A

EUROSTAT report on the current state of its SDI work can be found in annex to the

Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Progress Report on the European

Union Sustainable Development Strategy 2007176.


Setting objectives and measuring progress in achieving them with indicators are two

closely related features. SD indicators are being used and developed in all MS and form

an important part of the NSDS in many of them. However, the degree of their

incorporation into national statistics and their number and grouping into sets, and above

all their usage to inform political decisions and to monitor trends in sustainable

development varies widely. In a recent report177 on good practices in NSDS of OECD

countries, the OECD highlights the work of Austria, the Czech Republic and Ireland onindicators and targets. The Austrian SDS specifies 52 indicators in four action fields –

quality of life in Austria, Austria as a dynamic business location, Austria as a living

d A t i ’ l b l ibilit d i l d 20 k bj ti ith

Only a minority of MS have put their National SD Strategies to a peer review or

participated in the review of another state's strategy. Noteworthy is the fact that theexternal evaluation of the Dutch NSDS by a peer review team comprised of

representatives of Finland, Germany and South Africa, executed in 2007, was the first of

its kind under the revised EU SDS. The fact that the evaluation came to the conclusion

that the current Action Programme on Sustainable Development "Sustainable Action"



that the current Action Programme on Sustainable Development "Sustainable Action"

(2003) "is not a sustainable development strategy"178 should not discourage other MS to

put their strategies to the same test. An external review should rather be seen as an

opportunity to improve existing strategies and turn them into more useful policy guiding

instruments – a process that is currently under way in the Netherlands.

Most MS have chosen to set up National Sustainable Development Councils or

comparable bodies tasked with the development and implementation of the NSDS.

However, considerable differences exist as to how well these Councils and the NSDS as

such are embedded in the institutional context. The political clout NSDSs actually have

in the national political systems is not reported on very well, but seems to vary

considerably. In this context Finland, France and Germany should be mentioned aspositive examples. In all three countries, the Prime Minister / Chancellor and their

respective offices play a central role in the implementation and development of the

NSDS. This assures a high level of visibility and, since Prime Ministers' offices and the

German Chancellery play a central role in policy coordination and development.

9.6 Conclusions

The cross-cutting themes form an important part of the EU SDS and have been given

equal status with the seven key challenges for good reason. They spell out what is needed

to turn a collection of interrelated, and mostly environmental, policies into a coherent

concept. However, for the reasons outlined below, the cross-cutting themes still play a

subdued role within the overall EU SDS.

Under all five headings, work by the Member States related specifically to SD is at arelatively early stage and, in many cases, it is still observable in their reports that

considerable difficulties persist in making the link between the cross-cutting policy areas

Developing a long-term vision and setting concrete objectives are two initial key steps of

a strategic process. While a long term vision is certainly present in the EU SDS,

sufficiently concrete objectives are not provided throughout. This especially concerns thecross-cutting themes. Currently, the objectives put forward in this part of the strategy

often lack a clear addressee, are not measurable, stay rather vague and noncommittal and

frequently do not come with a timeframe for achieving them. In many cases, it is open to

a certain degree of interpretation what exactly is to be achieved under each heading and



a certain degree of interpretation what exactly is to be achieved under each heading and

what measures are to be taken. The lack of guidance provided by the EU strategy in this

respect obviously leaves Member States guessing which policy initiatives are relevant and

merit reporting. The fact that, in contrast to the seven key challenges, there is no coherent

subdivision into operational objectives and targets on the one side, and actions on the

other, adds to this.

Since the strategy itself often leaves it to the discretion of the MS what to focus on in

their reports, selective and incomplete reporting is often the result. MS whose report

structure is built on an explicit restatement of EU SDS objectives, for example, come to

differing conclusions about what these are – both as to their number and their content179.

This not only impairs the comparability of efforts made and successes achieved, but alsodilutes the impact of the strategy as a whole. Furthermore, MS often do not succeed in

establishing a convincing link between the activities described in their reports and the

objectives of the strategy.

When it comes to formulating objectives, the strategic management and project

management literature180 puts forward the idea of SMART objectives, i.e. that objectives

should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timed. Many of the

objectives of the EU SDS contained in the cross-cutting themes would clearly benefit

from a certain degree of focus and clarification in this respect.

10. Conclusions and recommendations



10.1 Strategic conclusions

1. The EU SDS remains relevant as the key European framework for promoting

sustainable development; sustainable development is becoming increasingly

important in European, national, regional and local policy making. The EU SDS

from June 2006 serves as a useful starting point for promoting sustainable

development in Europe. As such, its ambitions are high, particularly as it aims to be

coherent and broad-based, and addressing the fundamental behaviour of citizens and

firms is far from easy.

2. The EU SDS represents a prioritisation at a specific point in time. Various

sustainable development challenges are competing with each other. The 7 themes

can be considered equal in importance, but in practice the themes 1 and 2 may well

be considered as more important than themes 6 and 7. As of late, the theme of

climate change is clearly racing to the top, while sustainable consumption and

production and public health are also increasing in importance. Other priorities –

such as conservation and natural resource management or sustainable transport –

remain equally vital but there tend to be less key policy initiatives.

3. It is early day to review progress. At the time progress reports were submitted by

Member States, the EU SDS had been adopted just one year earlier. In light of the

need to translate the EU SDS to national practices, this can be considered a short or

even very short time frame for measuring progress.

4. The contexts for Member States is different – there is no one size fits all; The ability

to contribute to themes varies strongly; some Member States are not willing/able to

report on some themes at all and this is sometimes indeed due to the context New

6. Signals of success can be recorded in all areas, but progress is overall encouraging in

areas of product lifecycle thinking and minimising waste; increasing the share of

national territory that receives protected status for the benefit of nature conservation;sustainable forestry initiatives, harder targets for various environmental policy areas

such as energy efficiency, climate change, organic farming, and active labour market

policies. Key initiatives are also taken to curb lifestyle related diseases, pandemic

preparedness, and to improve the handling of chemicals, while Official Development



preparedness, and to improve the handling of chemicals, while Official Development

Assistance is increasing in order to live up to Millennium Objectives more globally.

7. Reporting on various themes falls short and Member States can be reluctant to look

back. Conservation and natural resource management notably is a theme where

reporting is rather weak – there is only limited or no reporting on areas where

progress is limited or where actions are non-existent. Even when taking into account

the various national contexts, some Member States did not to report on specific

themes at all which leads to considerable white spaces. An example is the objective

to address the impact of globalisation on workers – where only two countries (France

and Finland) record initiatives.

8. Certain areas of relevance to SD are not explicitly covered; e.g. spatial planning/

land use/urban development or addressing wastelands (New Member States) receive

only limited attention. Despite reference to Local Agenda 21 and referring to local

and regional actors, the spatial or urban dimension could provide powerful solutions,

e.g. in the area of decoupling economic growth from transport demand.

9. Reporting is not always focused on key policy initiatives. A general tendency is to

report extensively on the situation without coupling this to specific policy initiatives.

Another tendency in the reports is to focus on future goals and targets rather than on

key policy initiatives that have been taken recently.

10. The relation between key policy initiatives and their impact is not direct – a time lag

is present. Therefore it may be too early to measure the impact of the EU SDS at

this stage. Furthermore, a link between initiatives and impacts can be established

much more directly in some areas (e.g. public health) then in some other areas (e.g.climate change), where relations are much more indirect. Furthermore, impacts can

vary between geographic levels: what is sustainable at one level may not be

t i bl t th l l

note, Structural Funds are also used for investing in environmental infrastructures,

such as waste water treatment plans, while the Operational Programmes on Human

Resources appear to be well aligned with the EU SDS objective on social inclusion,demography and migration.

13. Impacting mainstream policies is the real challenge for the SDS. A real value added

of the EU SDS could be that it takes environmental (and social, economic) priorities



( , ) p

out of a silo and into the mainstream of national policy making. The extent to which

national and EU strategies are successful in this varies. For instance, the EU SDS

thus provides an excellent opportunity to analyse and promote the integration of

climate change and energy objectives in the policy areas that may not already be

fully aligned with the climate objectives. Examples of such important policy areas

include:

a. Cohesion and structural funding

b. Trade policy

c. Agriculture, CAP

d. Research and technology development

e. Taxation, subsidies and other economic instrumentsf. External relations broadly speaking, including policies relating to security,

development assistance and energy supply

Impact assessments – requiring the ex ante economic, social and environmental

assessment of Commission proposals and initiatives – is a good tool for making such

impact at Community level.

14. International literature on SDS informs us about the complexity of challenges.

Although reports highlighting unwanted side-effects of key policy initiatives exist,

such complexities are rarely reported in Member State reports. Moreover,

interlinkages between and within themes are not always sufficiently grasped and

much reporting can be said to be fragmented. The prime example of such a policy

issue is biofuels. Although research181 into the sustainability of different types of

biofuels has been undertaken, the complexity of the issue is only reflected in some

MS progress reports and is almost exclusively dealt with under the energy and

transport headings.

10.2 Progress by theme

Table: Coverage of the Themes by Operational Objective in the National ProgressReports

Theme/ Climate

change and

clean

Sustainable

transport

Sustainable

consumption

and

Conservation

and

management

Public

health

Social

inclusion,

demography

Global

poverty and

SD



Operational Objective

clean

energy

and

production

management

of natural

resources

demography

and

migration

SD

Objective 1 ♦♦♦ / ♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦♦♦ ♦♦

Objective 2 ♦ ♦♦♦ ♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦ ♦♦

Objective 3 ♦♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦♦♦

Objective 4 ♦♦♦ ♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦♦♦ ♦♦ ♦

Objective 5 ♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Objective 6 ♦♦♦ ♦♦ ♦ ♦♦♦ ♦ ♦♦

Objective 7 ♦ ♦♦ ♦

Objective 8 ♦♦♦ ♦♦ ♦♦

Total/average score/

ranking

2.3

(1)

1.9

(4)

2.0

(2/3)

1.3

(7)

2.0

(2/3)

1.6

(6)

1.8

(5)

15. High importance attached to climate change and clean energy; there is considerable

evidence of a large number of diverse initiatives being taken. Many of these are

clearly driven more by Kyoto commitments and EU political developments within

the energy sector than by the EU SDS itself. The coverage and level of detail in

reporting varies significantly, making the national reports a far from perfect basis forassessing specific progress. Most attention is paid to compliance with Kyoto,

renewable energy, biofuels and energy efficiency. However, much less attention is

paid to post-2012 emission reductions or to the consistency between energy policy

and competitiveness, security and broader environmental targets. Finally, reporting

on adaptation is scarce, while integration of mitigation in other policies is addressed

by some, but randomly.

16. In the area of sustainable transport, there is a focus on greenhouse gas emissions

but only limited proof of strategic thinking and overarching and anchored strategies.

Few countries dare to address the issue of decoupling economic growth from

has enough teeth and leverage in this domain to command change. Furthermore,

there appears to be a lack of direction in 3 out of 4 objectives. Some Member States

have a broad range of action plans and strategies, but there is little action in severalcountries. A specific observation concerns the various national labelling schemes

that have been created. As these have the potential to influence purchase – and

therefore production – patterns, they could also fragment the internal market and

serve as a barrier for cross border trade, confuse consumers and not free of quality



assurance concerns. A wider – and more fundamental - concern is that the current

level of activities under this heading is limited in the light of the deep-seated habits

of producers and consumers – many of them being rather unsustainable in nature.

The limited attention to environmental technologies appears to be a missedopportunity – especially when seen in the light of synergies with the Lisbon

Strategy.

18. Of all themes, reporting appears to be weakest in the area of conservation and

natural resource management. Most progress in has been booked in halting

biodiversity loss in general and designating Natura 2000 areas – but success is

partial at best. Reported progress on Natura 2000 areas easily masks the fact thatdesignating land as protected area alone does not necessarily induce a halt in

biodiversity loss. Despite progress in particular areas and countries and sectors, a

large group of Member States seem to be not very clear in how they plan to proceed

in this area – there is little proof of efforts that the EU SDS has been integrated in

substantial programming and investment plans (e.g. for 2007-2013). Often,

approaches are not integrated, policy responses are restricted to the more convenient

intervention areas; costly investments are not necessarily made and tax raising

measures appear to be sometimes driven by fiscal rather than by real environmental

considerations. Moreover, the current reporting from Member States indicates that

primary production is still being inefficiently used, while independent evidence

suggests that primary resources are in fact being heavily over-used.

19. The information collected and used by Member States on public health is rather

good but still varies strongly, so does the capacity of Member States to participate in

agenda setting and in delivering public health gains. Key policy initiatives haveabove all been taken to curb lifestyle related diseases, pandemic preparedness, and to

improve the handling of chemicals. Reported progress is more limited in areas of

f d d f d l i l ti i l lf d t l h lth hil M b St t

20. Most countries provide reasonably comprehensive but rather fragmented reporting

in the area of social inclusion, demography and migration. Although the social

dimension of sustainable development is not considered opportune by some MemberStates (e.g. Denmark, Poland), most attention goes to the reduction of poverty and

active labour market policies – promoting the inclusion of various target groups

(older workers, younger workers, migrants, women and the disabled); this is an

important objective not only from the point of EU SDS but also from the Lisbon



agenda. However, objectives do not always sit comfortably together. A tension can

be noticed between the challenge to reduce the number of people at risk of poverty

and the need to modernise social protection in view of demographic change. In

some countries (e.g. the Czech Republic), cuts in welfare reform are explicitlymentioned. Reporting on the objective to reduce negative effects of globalisation on

workers is almost non-existent. Furthermore, limited or no evidence exists about the

added value of the EU SDS in this respect.

21. The impression that emerges from the national reports is that the objective of

addressing global poverty and sustainable development is overstretched. – and often

beyond the scope of individual Member States influence. Within this truly globalobjective, Member States are searching for focus however and they direct

themselves to specific themes or geographic regions that are particularly important

to them – which may lead to a rather patchy approach and not necessarily a good

basis for monitoring overall progress in this area. This is in itself already a

coordination challenge for which a UN Environmental Organisation could be called

for. Within the light of expected and targeted increases in ODA, a stronger

emphasis on the effectiveness and efficiency of such aid would have been expected

(Paris Declaration). New Member States currently building up their external

development aid strategies could include the SD dimension immediately – yet there

is little sign that this is actually happening.

10.3 Cross-cutting themes

22. Reporting on cross-cutting themes is rather problematic; by formally giving thecross cutting themes the same rank as the seven key challenges, the EU SDS of June

2006 makes clear that it attaches equal importance to them. However, the strategy

environment and the importance of its preservation. This approach does not

sufficiently acknowledge the breadth of the SD concept.

24. The EU SDS defines the role of research and development in sustainable

development in a broad way yet, this approach only found entry in less than half of

the MS progress reports. While virtually all MS assign great importance to research

and development in the field of renewable energy, energy saving, as well as

h l h id f SD i i ffi i i Thi



transport technology, the wider context of SD receives insufficient attention. This

narrow focus on supporting research into new technologies does not do justice to the

concept of SD and this section should not be confined to the creation and availability

of technology and knowledge, but also include scientific research concerning itsusage and uptake. A meaningful interlinkage of natural and social sciences to

further the cause of SD is only pursued by few MS, for instance in Germany.

25. As concerns the usage of finance and economic instruments to promote SD, nearly

all Member States report an increase or the introduction of taxes related to energy

consumption or pollution. However, information on the usage of extra income

levied by these taxes is patchy and only a handful of states report an actual shift intaxation from labour to resource and energy usage, as called for in the Strategy.

Finland is one of these few exceptions.

26. Only few MS seem to have a coherent strategy in place that would answer the

question as to what role communication and the public involvement is to play in SD.

As a consequence, most MS report on a range of rather limited and seemingly

unrelated communication campaigns that address certain elements of SD and not the

concept as a whole. A clear rationale how communication and the involvement of

various groups of actors can contribute to progress in the SD area is almost entirely

missing. Overall, few MS really seem to have the ambition to enhance public

perception of SD issues on a broad scale.

27. Clearly, the challenge for Member States to implement and report on SDS progress

is substantial. It requires good interministerial cooperation and horizontal methods

of working; the ability to synthesise all outputs varies between Member States.

10 4 C f ti l SDS t d EU SDS

Denmark 2002

Estonia 2005

Finland 2006

France 2003

Germany 2002 2005

Greece 2002 2003

Hungary** (2007) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --



Ireland 1997 2002

Italy 2002

Latvia 2002

Lithuania 2003 2006

Luxembourg 1999

Malta 2006

Netherlands 2003

Poland 2000

Portugal 2002

Romania 1999

Slovakia 2001 2005

Slovenia 2005

Spain** (2007)

Sweden 2004 2006

UK 2005

* NSDS is currently being drafted, draft document only available in Bulgarian

** NSDS currently in the legislative process

() Process is currently under way

-- no information available

28) Overall, congruence between National SDS and the EU SDS is fair at the level of

themes, but not in all areas. Theme 1 to 5 are recognised much more strongly in the

National SDS than the themes 6 (social) and 7 (global poverty). Furthermore, New

Member States appear to be less in line with the EU SDS – even when the NationalSDS are in a developmental stage. There appears to be some reticence in certain

quarters to embrace the environmental dimension when taking forward economic

and social development (e g Baltic States and Slovenia) Overall there seems

10.6 Recommendations

a. Need to establish a hierarchy of objectives; sustainable transport could well be

regarded as an intermediate objective and there is a need to structure and prioritise

these objectives much better. The number of objectives is currently very large,

i ll h th tti th t h i il i ht Thi i k



especially when the cross-cutting themes are seen to have similar weight. This risk

of overstretching reduces the possible impact of the EU SDS; a streamlining of the

EU SDS is therefore needed from a logical perspective.

b. Internal cohesion within themes needs to be strengthened. Operational

objectives/targets often demonstrate overlap; a hierarchy between operational

objectives – sometimes logical – appears to be missing; this leads to a less than

optimal coherence. The inconsistencies within themes make reporting by Member

States as well as the assessment of MS reporting more difficult and are likely to have

contributed to gaps in MS reporting.

c. Increase the impact of the EU SDS on mainstream policies through Community

impact assessments. The crosscutting nature of sustainable development provides a

valuable opportunity to address the mainstreaming of the various SD themes in EU

and national policies. More of the focus in EU SDS implementation could be

directed toward assessing and promoting integration of sustainable development

priorities in main strands of EU and MS policy such as agricultural policy, structural

and cohesion funds, and trade policy – beyond the assessment of economic, social

and environmental pillars on their own.

d. Strengthen links with the Lisbon Strategy, especially in areas where synergy exists.

For instance actions to promote labour market participation or the promotion of

environmental technologies are in line with both concepts and there would be

significant scope for strengthening these links and join forces.

e. Promote SD specifically in New Member States; national policies are often stillunder development or review in the NMS and considerable investment programmes

are being taken forward; more inclusion of SD thinking and acting could lead to

Annex 1: Overview of key policy initiatives by

theme



Congruence with EU SDS

objectives

Objective 1:

a) Kyoto Commitments

b) Post-2012 emission reductions

c) Post-2012 Intl. framework

Objective 2: Energy policy

a) <> competitiveness

b) <> Security of supply

c) <> Env. sustainability

Objective 3a) Mitigation in all

pol.

Objective 3b) Adaptation in all

pol.

Objective 4) Renewable

energy targets

Objective 5) Biofuel

targets

Objective 6) Energy

efficiency

UK On track to meet Kyotocommitment. Has nationalGHG reduction target that ismore ambitious than the EUcommitment.

Much planning going on:

- 2007: White Paper on Energy

- 2007: Draft Climate ChangeBill with obligation to reduceby 60% by 2050.

Climate Change policyincreasingly institutionalized.

Plans support for Carbon

1a)

(Kyoto commitment: -12.5% from1990. Status 2005: -15.7%)

National target to reduce emissions by

20% by 2010.1b)

Commissioned Stern Review on theeconomics of CC.

White Paper on Energy and draftClimate Change Bill: reduce emissionsto 2020 and 60% reduction by 2050.

5-year carbon budgets.

3a)

Office of Climate Change established2006 providing analysis and policydevelopment to all Departments.

Local Government Associationestablished Climate ChangeCommission.

Transport: Support for technologyinnovation and behavioural change.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS):Demonstration of projects andregulatory work (OSPAR Convention)

Renewable Electricity targets:

2010: 10%

2020: 20%

Main tools Renewables Obligation,

improved planning system.

Offshore wind demonstration.Development of wave and tidalenergy.

2007: UK Biomass Strategy forelectricity, heat and transport.

2008: Renewable TransportFuels Obligation to ensureincreasing share:

2010: 5%. CO2 andsustainability reporting

requirement.

One of three MemberStates to submit"National EnergyEfficiency Action Plan"on time.

EE expected to improve25% to 2020. Newpackage of possible measures identified toimprove energyefficiency by a further10% to 2020.

- Smart meters

- New homes zero



Progress on EU Sustainable Development Strategy 149

ppCapture and Storage (CCS)

Plans to introduce emissions

trading scheme for large servicesector and Govt.

carbon by 2016

- Carbon Reduction

Commitment: Emissionstrading scheme for largeservice sector and Govt.

- Building energyperformance certificates.

- Make suppliers provideenergy services and notenergy units.

- Carbon EmissionsReduction Targetcomprising EE,

microgeneration andbehavioural measures.

Removal of barriers toCHP.



.

Congruence with EU SDSobjectives

Decoupling economic

growth from demand fortransport

Sustainable energy

use and reducinggreenhouse gas

emissions

Reducing pollutant

emissions tominimise effects onhealth

Balanced shift towards

environmentallyfriendly transport

modes

Reducing transport

noise

Improving efficiency

and performance of public transport

Average car flee

emissions of 140g/kmin 2008 and 120g/km

in 2012

Halving road

transport fatalities by2010 compared to

2000

transport;

Bulgaria No clear links to objectives, priority

seems to be on modernisation of

i f d i l i f

Modernisation of road

infrastructure

Increased use of lead

free fuel (no explanation

f h hi h

Large investments in

renewing the rolling stock

f il i

More stringent

enforcement of EU

i i l d h




infrastructure and implementation of

EU directives

of why this has

happened); State policy

to encourage production

and usage of bio-fuels;

emission requirements

are in line with EU

requirements

for rail services;

Implementation of the

River information System

on the Danube river or the

TEN-T priority Axis 18

Directives related to the

technical condition of

vehicles and inspections

of the technical

conditions of vehicles

Cyprus Range of specific actions Implementation of

Intelligent Transport

Systems; modernisation

of buses and public

transport

Czech Republic No clear links Introduction of a toll system

on Czech highways

Voluntary agreement

between government and

CNG filling stations

Integrated transport

system (PID) was

introduced in Prague;

share of population living

within the territory of the

PID should be 70% by

2010 and 90% by 2013

A unified transport

information system is

being implemented (does

not say by when this was

started, or will be

completed)

Accepted EU position for

the need of binding limits

to reduce average fleet

emissions to 120g/km

National road Safety

Strategy was

implemented in 2004

.


Decoupling economic

growth from demand fortransport

Sustainable energy

use and reducinggreenhouse gas

emissions

Reducing pollutant

emissions tominimise effects onhealth

Balanced shift towards

environmentallyfriendly transport

modes

Reducing transport

noise

Improving efficiency

and performance of public transport

Average car flee

emissions of 140g/kmin 2008 and 120g/km

in 2012

Halving road

transport fatalities by2010 compared to

2000

Denmark Links are clear, but not all objectives

are covered

Compact cities initiative to

reduce transport needs

Duty for cars has been

changed to provide

incentives to purchase

smaller and more fuel-

New cars with particle

filters are exempted

from duty; Introduction

of environmental zones

A new strategy for

intermodal transport has

been developed; A

national cycling strategy

Road noise strategy with

10 initiatives to limit

road noise on an ongoing

basis; Noise reduction




smaller and more fuel

efficient cars (does not

say when this

happened);

of environmental zones

in cities to limit particle

pollution;

national cycling strategy

focussing on operation

and maintenance of

national cycling routes,

and promotion of cycling

with municipal authorities

basis; Noise reduction

along railway lines has

also been a priority for

the government; less

noisy trains have also

been introduced; Noise

partnerships between

home owners and public

authorities to finance

improvements to reducenoise

Estonia No clear links Planning to increase

excise duty on fuels

faster than planned

Dedicated public

transport lanes

Allocation of 15% of

road management funds

to local governments for

road construction in

2007; Building separate

tracks for light traffic

alongside national roads;

improving safety at

railway crossings

.


Decoupling economicgrowth from demand fortransport

Sustainable energyuse and reducinggreenhouse gas

emissions

Reducing pollutantemissions tominimise effects onhealth

Balanced shift towardsenvironmentallyfriendly transport

modes

Reducing transportnoise

Improving efficiencyand performance of public transport

Average car fleeemissions of 140g/kmin 2008 and 120g/km

in 2012

Halving roadtransport fatalities by2010 compared to

2000

Finland Links are clear, but the coverage of

objectives is limited and some areas

are not covered because of financial

constraints

New transport strategy

framework for transport;

Helsinki Metropolitan Area

and 16 other urban regions are

Legislation was passed

to promote use of bio-

fuels;

Implementation of

government's long-term

road safety vision




g

required to develop plans to

reconcile land use, housing

and transportation, and to

make better use of regional

services across administrative

boundaries; All regions with a

population of more than

50,000 are required to produce

transport system plans

France Clear link to objectives Encourages companies, local

authorities and administrations

to assess impact of their

policies (no clear measures are

mentioned)

Fiscal and regulatory

framework for

promoting bio-fuels;

measures to promote

eco-driving (not stated

what these are)

Public funding of non-

road infrastructure

(TGV); SNCF has

received lots of funding to

help it to improve its

quality of service to meet

international quality

standards; introduction of

public bicycle rental

systems in several cities

National noise pollution

plan for eliminating

"black-spots" along the

national road network;

implementation of the

EC Directive

2002/49/EC; Support for

research on measures to

reduce ambient transport

noise (not stated how

much money is allocated

for this, or what the

transport levy on

companies is used to

subsidise and fund

public transport; Several

new tram systems have

been launched; Rail link

to Charles de Gaulle

airport

Taxing company cars

based on their emissions;

Compulsory use of a 7-

class CO2 sticker system

for new private vehicles;

linking the costs of

vehicle registration to

CO2 emissions; tax

credits for purchase of

clean vehicles;

government procurement

of vehicles with

Stringent speed control

system;

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

specific research is) emissions under 140g/km

and using flex-fuels

Germany Introduction of fuel tax; National noise protection




y ;

tax cuts on electricity and

rail transport

p

package adopted (2007)

Greece Significant investments in

rail (Structural Funds)

Strategic Action Plan for

Road Safety (2006-

2010)

Hungary Some objectives are adequately dealt Objective of lowering

transport intensity was defined

in Hungarian national policy

(not stated how or when);

Development of regional

logistic centres;

Tax subsidies for

smaller, energy efficient

cars; costs of vehicle

registration is linked to

energy efficiency and

engine size; Excise duty

regulation promotes use

of CNG

Legal measures to

promote combined

transport (not clear what

these measures are);

Provision of new

infrastructure for

combined transport at

three inland ports in

Hungary

Implementation of the

EC Directive

2002/49/EC

Seven regional transport

organisations have been

created to organise

transport at a regional

level; government decree

2130/2006 and

2230/2006 specify: New

way for vehicle

reconstruction in the

field of bus transport;

development of railway

stock; establishing

regulations regarding

public transport

associations;

harmonisation of

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

timetables, regional

organisation of transport,

and termination of

parallel transport modes




Ireland No clear links National Spatial Strategy

emphasises the land-use

transport interaction and

deploys a range of measures

for integrated land use-

transport

15.8 billion Euro

investment in public

transport projects and

regional airports

Road Safety authority

was established in 2006

Italy Links are not clear Finance Act of 2007 instituted

the fund for sustainable

mobility (90 M euro/yr for

period 2007-09); established

the financial sources for

preparation of the General

Mobility Plan

Policy agreements with

municipalities and

industry associations to

promote methane gas;

low impact fuels

initiative was

implemented; car

sharing initiative was

implemented;

"wrecking" of two-stroke motor boats in

marine protected areas

was financed

Financial incentives for

replacing older cars, and

purchasing vehicles

running on methane,

LPG or electricity

Refinancing of law on

bicycle mobility by

providing better

infrastructure and

intersections; purchase of

electric and hybrid cars

for use in protected areas

Municipalities with more

than 30,000 residents

require Urban Traffic

Plans; Urban Mobility

Plans are also required

(it is not stated which

cities are required to

produce these plans, or

what they are supposed

to include)

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

Latvia No clear link to Registration of motor

vehicles presupposes a

positive conformity

assessment with the

Network of bicycle paths

is being developed

Public transport

development guidelines

for a reform of the sector

National Road Traffic

Safety Plan

Introduction of a points-

based recording system




EURO norms for

exhaust gases

for driving offences and

higher penalties for

drunk driving

Lithuania Focused on three objectives: 1)

decoupling, 2) improving the quality

of fuels, and 3) promote railways

and combined transport. Policy

measures are not mentioned in the

report. However, transport sector

seems to be performing well.

Situation is not yet in equilibrium

Approval of Programme

for enhancement of

production and

consumption of bio-fuels

Luxembourg Investments in new rail

lines (including trams)

Car taxation now based

on CO2 emissions (Jan.

2007)

Malta Encouraging park-and-

ride systems with free

shuttle service

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

Netherlands Only a minority of the objectives is

clearly covered by policy measures

Opening of a new rail

track for freight transport

linking Rotterdam port to

Germany

Funding for technology

development for "silent"

road surfaces, tyres,

rolling rail-stock

Investments in new

public transport

infrastructure; collective

taxi-systems outside

Campaign targeting

driving behaviour




urban areas

Poland No reporting on the subject

Portugal No clear links to logistics initiatives Logistics Strategic Plan

(Portugal Logistics) being

developed

Approval of Strategic

Guidelines for the

Maritime and Ports

Sector, under which

ports are required to

submit annual

sustainability reports.

Promotion of public

transport links - suburban

and national systems

Romania Environmental fund

stimulates renewal of the

national car fleet and

replacement of cars older

than 12 years; Several

EU directives were

incorporated into

national legislation (bio-

fuels, quality of petrol

and diesel fuels);

Provision of fuel-

EURO 4 norms come

into effect as of 1

January 2008

Information campaign

for raising public

awareness about road

safety and pedestrian

safety.

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

economy and CO2

emission information to

consumers in the

marketing campaigns




has been agreed to

between the car

producers, importers,

and the government

Slovakia Links are clear but coverage of goals

is limited

National program for

development of bio-

fuels; provision of

information about CO2

emissions and fuelconsumption from

vehicles to purchasers of

new vehicles;

Charging for road use Stimulating eco-driving

Slovenia no clear links In 2006, a Resolution on

Transport Policy laying

down the objectives and

measures for reducing

GHG emissions was

adopted

Requiring local

communities to take

additional measures

when certain threshold

values are exceeded (not

stated what these values

are, or for which

emissions this

obligation holds)

Adoption of the EC type

approval legislation;

Resolution on the

National Program for

Road Transport Safety

2007-2013

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

Spain Transport investments

have strong focus on rail

(48%)

Introduction of points

based drivers licence

Sweden Not all objectives are clearly Adapting physical planning Carbon-dioxide based Safer roads: separated




covered by policy measures. and settlement development

strategies to reduce demand

for transport and increase the

scope for environmentally

friendly transport

car tax was introduced in

2006; Large petrol

stations must offer

renewable fuel alongside

petrol and diesel; Grants

are provided for

investments in filling

stations for biogas or

other renewable fuels;Vehicles purchased

under public

procurement have to be

green vehicles; 25% pf

all government vehicles

have to be green

vehicles; Premium for

individuals purchasing

green cars; fairway dues

(for ships) are

differentiated based on

emissions of sulphur and

oncoming traffic lanes;

speed monitoring

programs; policing to

reduce drunken driving

and promote seat belt

use; government

subsidies for in-vehicle

safety technologies

.




emissions



modes




in 2012


2000

nitrogen oxides; landing

and take-off charges at

state-owned airports are

based on emissions of

nitrogen oxides and




nitrogen oxides and

hydrocarbons

UK Clearly linked to objectives Carbon pricing (tax, trading);

Low Carbon Transport

Innovation Strategy;

Voluntary agreements with

car manufacturers; Smarter

choices information

campaign; communicationscampaign

Renewable transport

fuels obligation: 5% of

transport fuel sold in the

U.K. will have to come

from renewable sources;

Urban congestion and

road pricing schemes

A new air quality

strategy has just been

published

Smarter choice campaign

(for transport choices);

promotion of cycling by

providing infrastructure

and information

campaigns; soft measures

to encourage more peopleto bicycle; traffic demand

management schemes

Maps for identification

of noise sources is

underway

Significant investments

in public transport (not

stated what these are, or

how large they are)

Cleaner vehicle task force

has made several

recommendations

Road safety strategy

including 150 measures

across 10 themes



.Congruence with EU

SDS objectives

Objective 1

Improving resource

efficiency

Objective 2

Gaining and maintaining

competitive advantage

Objective 3

Avoiding

overexploitation of

renewables

Objective 4

Halting biodiversity loss

Objective 5

Contributing to UN goals

on forestry

Objective 6

Avoiding generation of

waste

SDS

Latvia Only very limited coverageof EU SDS objectivesmostly geared towards

633 specially protected nature areashave been established (out of which

336 are Natura 2000 sites)




mostly geared towardswildlife conservation

336 are Natura 2000 sites)11 EU-Life Nature projects

Lithuania No strategy, no concreteactions. no clear linkages

to SDS

Luxembourg

Malta Multiple action plans andambitions in all areas;implementation and

progress less clear; someclear linkages to SDS

Business Promotion Act andNational Strategic Plan for

Research and Innovation: 2007-10

Declaration of 26 terrestrial and 1marine protection area(s)

Netherlands No concrete actions – no

real strategy. No clearlinkages to SDS

Poland

Portugal Many planned measuresfor sustainable rural

development; strong focuson forests and proposed

regional watermanagement plans;

contribution is noteworthy

Natura 2000 sector plan completedwith creation of Protected Marine

Areas

National Inventory of Forests;Regional Forest management

plans; National Forest FirePrevention Plan

Romania Problems with waste – far

behind EU average.Intentions are apparent

Share of protected natural areas to

grow from 8% (2005) to 15% by2013.

Unitary management

structures for all forestsintroduced. Implementation of

Forest DevelopmentProgramme

Slovakia No strategy, focus onforestry; no clear linkages

to SDS

Action Plan of NationalForestry Plan

.Congruence with EU

SDS objectives

Objective 1

Improving resource

efficiency

Objective 2

Gaining and maintaining

competitive advantage

Objective 3

Avoiding

overexploitation of

renewables

Objective 4

Halting biodiversity loss

Objective 5

Contributing to UN goals

on forestry

Objective 6

Avoiding generation of

waste

Slovenia Main focus is through theOPs and RDP. Strong

focus on nature protection.Some clear linkages to

Sustainable use of drinkingwater backed by OP for

drinking water supply (2006);many other OPs on waste and

Marine Fisheries Act (2006),implements common

fisheries policy

Natura 2000 covers 35.5% of territory.

Co-financing of investmentsin improving the economicvalue of forests within RDP




SDS recyclingSpain Although a very strong

focus on biologicalconservation the rest of the

overall theme is entirelymissing. Therefore no

overall strategy identifiableand very limited overall

contribution.

27% of territory is Natura 2000network. National Site List

completed December 2006. Naturalheritage and Biodiversity Bill (8th

June 2007); 12 national conservationstrategies designed in addition to this

bill

Sweden Strong commitment tobiodiversity strategy;strong signals from

government, noteworthy

contribution and clearlinkages to SDS

RDP adopted (SEK 35bn) Management plan for cod(fish) in the Baltic sea

(2006); Plans for plaice andsol in North Sea to be

concluded.

127 action programmes covering 250species and different habitats; 67,000

ha nature secured in 2005/6; localand municipal nature conservation

initiative was completed; Natura2000 almost complete

Tax on combustion of household waste to increaserecycling of materials (2006)

UK Many separate strategiesand reviews and action

plans on range of issues, noreal quantifiable progress;limited linkages to SDS

UK has developed a range of SCP indicators to support

national SDS and sustainableresource use

Funding to reduce number of timber lorries on fragile rural

roads

National targets set in WasteStrategy for England 2007

Table: Overview of key policy initiatives that contribute to the EU SD Strategy objectives

Theme: Public Health

Congruence

with EU SDS

objectives

Improving

protection against

health threats

Further

improving

food and feed

legislation

Promote

animal health

and welfare

standards

Curbing increase in

lifestyle related diseases

Reducing health

inequalities within

and between MS

Ensuring that chemicals

are handles in a safe way

by 2020

Improving

information on

pollution

Improving mental

health and

tackling suicide

risks

Austria Clear linkage toobjectives

Pandemic crisis planevaluated by ECDC

Eggs laid bycaged hensremoved from

Introduction of ‘HealthySchools’

First pilot projects onchemical leasing businessmodel




supermarket anddiscount stores;Ban on usingwild animals incircuses orshowing dogsand cats in petshops;establishment of an AnimalProtectionCouncil;creation of standardisedprogressiveanimalprotectionlegislation

Belgium No clearlinkage toobjectives

Development of emergency plans;monitoring of diseasesand health indicatorsand assessment of risks; studies onemerging risks;establishment of network for crisisprevention

Collaborationto andimplementationof additionalEU regulationson foodadditives andhealth claims;explanation of the regulationon trade in foodsupplements

Optimisation of the legislationfor theprotection of animals andhumans againstanimal diseases;regulation of veterinarymedicalprofessionalsand use of veterinarymedicines;enactment of strict regulations

Development of nationalnutrition and health plan(2006-2010); Development of nutrition guides for differentage groups; Adoption of federal anti-tobacco plan(since 2006, smoking ban inpublic spaces, and extendedto hotel and catering sector in2007); Set up of inspectionsystem;Declaration of intent topromote health in primaryand secondary education (Toyour health!); introduction of walking Sundays; TV

Reduction programme onpesticides and biocides

Introduction of National EnvironmentHealth Action Plan;Introduction of network of medicalenvironmental experts;Provision of information on ozonealarm and heath wave;Introduction of scientific platform onenvironment and health

Federal plan tocombat suicide;Introduction of Flemish action planto reduce suicidemortality rate by 8%(2000-2010)

Congruence

with EU SDS

objectives

Improving

protection against

health threats

Further

improving

food and feed

legislation

Promote

animal health

and welfare

standards

Curbing increase in


Reducing health

inequalities within

and between MS


are handles in a safe way

by 2020

Improving

information on

pollution

Improving mental

health and

tackling suicide

riskson animalwelfare and theorganisation of necessaryinspections

programme on health in dailylife; Introduction of policy topromote a healthy food andphysical behaviour forchildren and adolescents

Bulgaria No clearlinkage toobjectives

Since 2001, Nationalstrategy and Nationalprogram for

National program forlimitation of tobacco smoking(2007-2010); Monitoring of

In 2006, the Nationalstrategy forimplementation of e-

National plan for the impactof surroundingenvironment-health

Adoption of Nationalprogram on mentalhealth (2004-2012)




prophylactics andcontrol of AIDS andsexually transmitteddiseases; Nationalprogram for preventionand control of TB(2007-2011); Nationalimmunization calendaris actualized

intervention program forintegrated prophylactics of chronic non communicablediseases

Health was introduced;National health strategyof Bulgaria focuses onethnic minorities (2005-2015)

Cyprus No clearlinkage toobjectives –actions

mentioned arevery general. Ageneral healthplan (health inall policies)was introduced

Continuous informingfamilies, teachers,overall community ondangers and means of

prevention andprotection

CBA of prevention andtherapeutic programs onCVD, cancer etc

Development of informationcollection systems andmonitoring programs

Czech

Republic

No clearlinkage toobjectives andpublic health –no specificactionsmentioned

Denmark No clearlinkage toobjectives

Adoption of EU rules in2005 withregard toperfumecontent of cosmetics,detergents andcleaning agents

Chemicals action plan(2006-2009); Regulation onworking with chemicalsubstances and materialshas been amended (2004);National list of unwantedchemicals has been revised



Congruence

with EU SDSobjectives

Improving

protection againsthealth threats

Further

improvingfood and feed

legislation

Promote

animal healthand welfare

standards

Curbing increase in


Reducing health

inequalities withinand between MS


are handles in a safe wayby 2020

Improving

information onpollution

Improving mental

health andtackling suicide

riskspublic controlinto Swedishlegislation(2006);produced

(Swedish ChemicalsAgency)

UK No clearlinkage toobjectives, butdevelopment of well-being

Food industrySustainabilityStrategy (2006)– food milesare used as

Animal Healthand WelfareStrategy (2004),incl. costsharing on the

Several national strategiesand action plans, e.g. HealthChallenge England – nextsteps for choosing health(2006); Regional public

Healthy CommunitiesProgramme (2006-2008) is focusing ontackling local healthinequalities (capacity

Air Quality Strategy(2007); Information isavailable via websitesof Health ProtectionAgency and

Development of mental healthindicators (2007) inScotland; Suicidereduction strategy in




indicators is akey issue

indicator costs of animaldiseases,veterinarysurveillance

health groups address healthdeterminants within theirregion

building of localauthorities)

Environment Agency place

Table: Overview of Key policy initiatives that contribute to the EU SD Strategy objectives

Theme Social inclusion, demography and migration

Congruence with

EU SDS objectives

Reduce the number

of people at risk of

poverty and social

exclusion by 2010,

focusing on child

poverty

Ensure a high level

of territorial

cohesion and

respect for cultural

diversity

Modernise social

protection in view

of demographic

change

Significantly

increase the labour

market participation

of women and older

workers as well as

migrants

Develop an EU

migration policy –

including attention

to economic

dimension of

migration

Reduce negative

effects of

globalization on

workers

Promote increased

employment of

young people

Increase labour

market participation

of disabled people

Austria Links to EU SDS exist Report on strategies Comprehensive Active labour market




Links to EU SDS exist

but not so clearly

Report on strategies

for social protection

and social inclusion

prepared through

OMC

Comprehensive

training and

employment initiatives

for women; various

measures targeted to

older workers

Active labour market

policies taken forward

- unspecified

Belgium Reform pressures

increasing

Subsidise income of

families and costs of

housing

Implementation of

Generation Pact

National social

inclusion action plan;

Generation Pact

Bulgaria Social protection

system under

development

Social services for

children have been

stepped up

National Strategy for

Demographic

Development adopted;

Term for receiving

social assistance

benefits has decreased

to 18 months

National Action Plan

for Employment is

being carried out

Funding for disabled

people in 2006

increased; 20% more

people reached

Cyprus Increase in minimum

wages

Minimum wage

increased to 50% of

national median in

2008

Czech Republic Reforms lead to

reduced benefits

Public finance reform

(2008) leads to cuts in

Employment policy

has been gradually

National Programme

for Support and



Congruence with

EU SDS objectives

Reduce the number

of people at risk of poverty and social

exclusion by 2010,

focusing on child

poverty

Ensure a high level

of territorialcohesion and


diversity

Modernise social

protection in viewof demographic

change

Significantly

increase the labourmarket participation

of women and older

workers as well as

migrants

Develop an EU

migration policy –including attention

to economic

dimension of

migration

Reduce negative

effects of globalization on

workers

Promote increased

employment of young people

Increase labour

market participationof disabled people

guaranteed minimum

pension at social

security level

Higher social securityallowances introduced

Female employment

level 5.3 percentage

points above EU

average

Strong increase in the

employment level of

disabled people and

introduction of activeemployment measures




Lithuania No new policy

initiatives report

known


for Fight against

Poverty and Social

Exclusion (2004)


for Employment

(2004) being

implemented

Luxembourg Focus on preventing

child poverty

"Maison relais pour

enfants (MR)" – set of

actions preventing

child poverty

Malta Illegal immigration as

key concern

National Report on

Strategies for Social

Protection and Social

Inclusion 2006-08

Malta strongly favours

EU approach towards

illegal immigration

Netherlands Focus on raising

participation in labour

market

"Participation Summit"

(June 2007) has led to

concrete agreements

to increase labour

participation

Poland No attention paid to

this theme

Portugal No attention paid to

this theme

Congruence with

EU SDS objectives

Reduce the number

of people at risk of poverty and social

exclusion by 2010,

focusing on child

poverty

Ensure a high level

of territorialcohesion and


diversity

Modernise social

protection in viewof demographic

change

Significantly

increase the labourmarket participation

of women and older

workers as well as

migrants

Develop an EU

migration policy –including attention

to economic

dimension of

migration

Reduce negative

effects of globalization on

workers

Promote increased

employment of young people

Increase labour

market participationof disabled people

Romania First steps in

development aid taken

Anti-poverty actions

focusing on families

with children

SlovakiaSocial protectionsystem being built up

Social benefits forfamilies with children

New draft law onsocial assistance takes

New law on legalstatus of foreigners




increased account of ageing (Jan. 2007) – in line

with EU

Slovenia Focus on raising

participation in labour

market

Implementation of

pension reforms aimed

at raising retirement

age

Programme of active

employment policy

measures (2007-2008)

Fund for Human

Resources

Development and

Scholarships

established

Vocational

Rehabilitation and

Employment of

Disabled Persons Act

adopted (2006)

Spain Focus on promotion of

disadvantaged groups

and participation in

society


on Social Inclusion

(2006-2008)

Pension reform actions

focusing on incentives

to work longer (61)

Strategic Plan for

Citizenship and

Integration 2007-2010

(€ 2 bln.)

Global Strategy on

work for handicapped

people adopted (2006)

Sweden Model of active labour

market policy and

good social protection

is retained

National action plan

for social inclusion

aims to combat

poverty and social

exclusion

Sweden's surplus in

public finance means

as a long-term buffer

Tax incentives

introduced to increase

participation of older

workers and those with

housework

Job guarantee for

young people

(December 2007) –

after 3 months

unemployment

Increase in number of

jobs with wage subsidy

UK Focus on active labour

market policies


for Social Protection

and Social Inclusion

Emphasis on

Sustainable

Communities as a

concept

Pension Reform:

Retirement age to 65

(women) and 68 (men)

The New Deal for

Young People: helped

to find 850,000 jobs




objectives

Make significant progress

towards meeting thecommitments with regard

to international goals

(especially Millennium

Declaration)

Improve international

environmental governance(IEG)

Raise the volume of aid to

0.7% of GNI by 2015 and0.56% in 2010

Promote sustainable

development in context of WTO;

Increase effectiveness of

aid policies

Include SD concerns in all

EU external policies.

Finland Overall engagement Efforts under Finnish

presidency taken to live up to

expectations

Involved in innovative funding

and debt relief initiatives

Environment and climate

change emphasized in

development policy

FranceLeading on development of UNEO

Wide range of programmes Promoting UN WorldEnvironmental Organisation

0,47% ODA of GNI Supportive of environmentaland social elements in WTO

Mediterranean strategy on SDadopted (2005);




a.o.

Germany 2015 Programme of Action

sets ten priority areas for the

fight against poverty, which go

beyond the Millennium Goals

Follow-up process to the

Johannesburg Summit – as part

of German development

cooperation

Greece Focus on Black Sea Economic

Co-operation and Euro-

Mediterranean Partnership

Breakdown of development

budget by Millennium Goal

Support to establishment of

UNEO

0.16% ODA of GNI n.a Focus on Black Sea Economic

Co-operation and Euro-

Mediterranean PartnershipHungary Participation in relevant

international fora

Ireland Rapid increase of ODA over

time

Full support to upgrade of the

UN Environmental Programme

(UNEP) as the UN's

environmental pillar.

0.53% ODA of GNI and

increasing

Italy Focus on Sub-Saharan Africa Support to French push to

UNEO

0.20% ODA of GNI – below

target

Latvia Development aid still at an

embryonic stage. Stated focus

on Moldova, Georgia and

Ukraine (and Belarus in some

areas)

2006-2010 financial planning

foresees annual spending of

0.1% of GDP on development

assistance


objectives


towards meeting thecommitments with regard



Declaration)


environmental governance(IEG)


0.7% of GNI by 2015 and0.56% in 2010

Promote sustainable

development in context of WTO;


aid policies



Lithuania Focus on democracy and

human rights in CIS countries

Luxembourg Above its punch Support to develop a UN

Environmental Organisation

(UNEO)

0.89% ODA of GNI Pushing efforts to increase

effectiveness and efficiency of

aid

Malta M l D l P li




Malta Malta Development Policy

under preparation

Netherlands Active involvement in

multilateral initiatives

Coherence between various

international goals to be

strengthened (coherence unit

establ.)

Support to Global

Environmental Facility as the

key international source to

fund environmental

improvements.

0.81% ODA of GNI

Poland No attention to this theme

Portugal Focus on climate change in

development aid

0.21% ODA of GNI – below

target

Romania Development aid still in

embryonic stage

National Strategy on Int.

Development Cooperation

Policy approved (May 2006)

Slovakia Development co-operation is

being built up

0.10% ODA of GNI (2006) Slovak Agency for

International Dev. Aid hereto

established (Jan. 2007)

Slovenia Strategy and Resolution for the

International Development

Cooperation prepared

0.11% ODA of GNI (2005)

Spain Focus on trade, aid and human

interventions

0.32% ODA of GNI Coordination between trade,

aid and human interventions


objectives


towards meeting the

commitments with regard



Declaration)


environmental governance

(IEG)


0.7% of GNI by 2015 and

0.56% in 2010

Promote sustainable

development in context of

WTO;


aid policies



Sweden Leading in development aid

and development

Strong support to align FAO

with Millennium Goals

Strong support to

establishment of UNEO

1.03% ODA of GNI Range of actions in support of

Paris Declaration

Strong focus on chemicals in

relation to development

UK Leading on several

international initiatives

Support to upgrade UNEP into

UNEO

0.52% ODA of GNI Support to Doha Development

Round

Leading OECD Task Force on

SEA in development

Overall



Cross-Cutting Policies Contributing to

the Knowledge Society

Education and Training Research and development

Financing and Economic

Instruments

Communication, Mobilising

Actors and Multiplying Success

Implementation, Monitoring and

Follow-Up

Increase in excise duty on petrol (+25%)

and diesel (+34.5%) in the beginning of

2008

Also marked increases in alcohol and

tobacco excise duties during 2008

Finland SD is included in the new national core

curriculum for basic and general upper-

secondary education (p.19)

Centres of excellence programme (2007-2013)

will have energy and the environment as one of

its main foci and put emphasis on international

Waste oil duty increased in 2007

Electricity tax for households and coal tax

are also set to increase

Regional and local sub-committee to

promote sustainable development in

regional and local government established

National indicators for SD introduced in 2000;

the current NSDS is base on 34 indicators

(p.23)




Strategy on the national implementation of

the UN decade for ESD completed in 2006

(p.19)

cooperation (p.20). "Depreciation of taxation on work will be

continued " (p.41)

in 2007 (p.22) Finland participated in the Dutch SD review

process

France Re-launch of "priority education" through the

setting-up of "heading for success" networks

will address equal opportunities in education

(p.35).

New 3-year plan for education in SD (EDD)

launched in early 2007 (p.35)

Support for the creation of 500 local

Agenda21s within five years (p.43)

Set of 12 "high-level indicators" used for SD

monitoring (p.56)

Germany In-service SD training schemes for teachers

and material for SD lessons provided through

the BKL-21 programme (p. 11)

Research for Sustainability Programme makes

(FONA) programme (EUR 800 million) makes

the concept of sustainability a permanent

specific target of research funding and takes an

interdisciplinary approach involving a broad

range of actors.

Set of key indicators is used for monitoring

SD related developments. Last indicator report

published in 2006 (p.15)

Both a Council for SD as well as a

parliamentary advisory council on SD exist.

GreeceHungary "House of Chances Network" and "Even

Chances Forum" put in place to improve

awareness of equal opportunity policies

(p.32)





Instruments




Follow-Up

Ireland National Development Plan 2007-2013

foresees spending of 25.8 billion EUR on

education and seeks to "maintain access to the

highest standards of education for the entire

society" (p. 43/44)

DEIS "Delivering Equality of Opportunity in

Schools" action plan for educational inclusion

"Tidy Towns" competition aims at

encouraging the development of

sustainable communities (700

participating towns each year) (p.50)

Italy SD among the strategic objectives in the




National Research Programme 2005-2007

Latvia National Programme based on the "Lifetime

Education Policy Guidelines 2007-2013"

seeks to improve the quality and accessibility

of education"

Lithuania

LuxembourgNew road vehicle tax based on fuelconsumption (GHG emission) of cars.

Introduction of a "climate change

contribution" surcharge on the fuel price

Malta "Eco-contributions" levied on

environmental unfriendly products

NSDS development process based on a

wide consultation of relevant actors as

well as the public

National Commission on Sustainable

Development is currently drawing up a NSDS.

Netherlands Network of universities and professionals

built around the Foundation Sustainable

Higher Education aims at adding

"sustainability perspective" to higher

education

Learning for Sustainable Development

Programme (LvDO) to stimulate awareness

BSIK programme supports better cooperation in

the academic community to address societal

needs: this includes collaborative research on

CO2 capture, sustainable agriculture as well as

sustainable construction.

Survey on subsidies with potential negative

effects on the environment

Ongoing efforts to internalize the real

environmental costs of products and

services

The Dutch NSDS was evaluated externally

through peer review in 2007. The review came

to the conclusion that the Dutch NSDS is not a

real SD strategy and does not provide an

adequate response to the current challenges.





Instruments




Follow-Up

and mutual learning on all levels of society

Poland

Portugal National Technology Plan foresees large scale

reform of the scientific landscape, more

international research cooperation and a strong

focus on environmental and energy technology

for 2008 (p.17)

New environmental motor vehicle tax from

July 2007, lower municipal property tax on

eco-friendly buildings as well as tax

benefits for investments in eco-technology

The "Sustainable Development System", built

around a set of SD indicators, is used as a

central monitoring and reporting tool for SD

Romania Environmental Fund financed through




compulsory levies on a range of

environmentally unfriendly products and

activities funds SD related projects

Slovakia

Slovenia School curricula are currently revised to

include aspects of SD – additionally a Life

Long Learning strategy is presently beingadopted

Progressive abolition of payroll taxes (by

January 2009)

Several new environmental chargesintroduced

Spain Special (lower) tax rates for biofuels and

bonuses on taxes managed by local bodies,

such as the tax on economic activities (IAE)

or the tax on property (IBI)

Spanish Network of Pro-Climate Cities.

The network’s principal aim is to promote

policies of sustainability in all Spanish

cities through education and awareness-

raising. To date, 140 cities, representing

almost 17 million people, have joined the

network.

Sweden Higher Education Act commits Institutions of

Higher Education to promoting SD

Sustainable Development is a priority area for

research and receives a 210 million SEK in

national funding 2005-2010

NSDS based on 87 indicators (out of which 12

are headline indicators)

Government Commission on Sustainable

Development started work in 2007





Instruments




Follow-Up

UK "Sustainable Development Action Plan" of

the Department of learning and skills and the

SD strategy of the Learning and Skills

Council embed SD principles in the education

sector (p.22)

"Sustainable Development Research Network"

promotes SD research and strengthens link

between providers of research and policy makers

Large multi-media campaign on CO2

launched in 2007 by the UK government

progress on eu sustainable development strategy

Documents