Not only do European environment ministers want an 8th Environment Action Programme (EAP) for the EU when the 7th EAP expires in 2020 but, in addition, at their meeting in Graz on Monday 29 October, they called for biodiversity and its funding means to be among the top priorities for steering the EU’s future policy.
The content of a possible future EAP was discussed by European ministers on the sidelines of the joint meeting of transport and environment ministers (see EUROPE 12126).
Welcoming the “intense discussion on a new environment action programme”, Elisabeth Köstinger, the Austrian minister for sustainability and tourism, who chaired the gathering and who was speaking on Tuesday 30 October before the joint session began, told the press: “Consensus has been reached. Member states believe the 8th action programme must also contain the themes of biodiversity and bio-economics and, above all, new funding means”.
As things stand, nothing has yet been decided and it is far too soon to say whether an 8th EAP will succeed the 7th EAP in 2020.
Miguel Arias Cañete, European Commissioner for Climate Action, took up the matter saying: “The 7th Environment Action Programme proposes a long-term vision for 2050 to remain within global limits. It is being assessed. This should be complete early next year. It will be up to the next Council Presidency to say whether or not an 8th action plan should be proposed”. He nonetheless went on to add: “The 7th EAP did prove useful”.
As the European Commission had initially been reticent, the timely 7th EAP had in its time amply fuelled the debate. It was because European ministers had been so insistent that the EAP had seen light of day in 2014.
The resolve expressed by the ministers in Graz is timely, upstream of the COP 14 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (see EUROPE 12125). It coincides with the publication, on Tuesday, of the alarming report by the WWF (“Living Planet Report 2018”) showing that, in just 44 years (1970-2014), the numbers of vertebrates worldwide (fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles) have declined by 60% on average. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)