Brussels, 21/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - The sustainable development strategy approved by the European Council in Gothenburg aroused mitigated reactions from European environmentalists - great disappointment among most, relative satisfaction among others - but none were fully satisfied. Those who compare the conclusions of the Summit to the Commission communication are disappointed as, by leaving certain specific aims to one side, the Heads of State and Government deprived the strategy of its substance, they say. Those who see this document as the point of departure for a new model of development, definitively anchored in the Community agenda, say they are pleased with this move forward. All are firmly banking on the Belgian Presidency to complete this first step.
Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE) consider that, in its lack of vision, aims, timetables and concrete measures, the strategy adopted by the European leaders is limited to good intentions. Martin Rocholl, FoE Director, said that each time the Commission pushed for concrete action, the Heads of State and Government weakened or ignored the proposal. He cited proposals relating to the elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels and tobacco, the legislation on environmental accountability, the use of public procurement to promote environmentally friendly products and services, and the strategy for reform of Common Agricultural Policy. Duncan Mac Laren, from FoE United Kingdom, said he was concerned by the slow progress made in sustainable development, compared to the aggressiveness shown by the Union for pushing forward a neo-liberal commercial agenda without taking into account the adverse impact it would have on environmental and social plans at world level.
The Greens at the European Parliament are mainly disappointed. They say the fact that sustainable development had been placed at the top of the Gothenburg Summit's agenda nurtured the hope that we would finally be crossing a great step towards a more sustainable Union. The recent proposal by the Prodi Commission contained ambitious objectives and concrete measures that have fed this hope. "Now, what happened in Nice (Ed.: the triumph of national egoism to the detriment of a good agreement), has happened again in Gothenburg: Germany is resisting the abolition of subsidies for coal, the United Kingdom rejects a tax on energy and the southern countries are protecting their tobacco subsidies", notes Heidi Hautala, joint president of the Greens/Ale Group. She deplores the fact that the European leaders had not "retained very much from the initial Commission proposal". Alexander de Roo, Vice-Chair of the Committee on the Environment, also considers that the Union leaders have no reason to rejoice as, given the colossal amount of work still to be done for the world summit on sustainable development (Johannesburg, September 2002), the "Gothenburg Summit is only a small step along a very long road". Mr de Roo deplores in this respect the fact that questions such as global governance and the inclusion of environmental and social criteria in the next multilateral trade negotiations had not been tackled. "The Commission and the European Parliament must now join forces to convince the Belgian Presidency to take more ambitious steps at the Laeken Summit", he stressed.
Greenpeace, on the other hand, welcomes the conclusions of the European Council as a "message of hope", even though the essential part remains to be achieved. Hans Wolters, Director of Greenpeace Europe, appreciates the fact that the "Union clearly indicates its determination to become the most effective economy in the world in terms of resource and energy use and that sustainable development is and will now remain on the Community agenda, as this will allow the Union to play a leading role in the preparation of the world summit on sustainable development". He went on to add: "stressing the importance of unlinking economic growth from resource utilisation, the European Council opens the road to improving the welfare of citizens while protecting the environment. This is the only way to reconcile the economy with ecology". However, he noted, "these conclusions must now be translated into concrete and coherent measures to be adopted by the Union governments during the Belgian Presidency". Among the positive points, Greenpeace cites: - the reminder that sustainable development is a fundamental objective of the Treaty; - the ambition to operate uncoupling between economic growth and the use of resources; - the aim of making the environment a transversal issue to be integrated in all other policies; - the will to reach a fair price for products and services by integrating real environmental costs; - the concrete and regular review of the strategy on the basis of impact assessments on sustainability; - the commitment to respect the aim underwritten by the industrialised countries to allocate 0.7% of their GNP to public development aid, in the prospect of the sustainable development summit to be held in Johannesburg in 2002; - the elimination of measures encouraging over-fishing; - the aim of preventing the negative impact of chemical products on health and the environment in one generation;
- the strengthening of the directive on renewable energies with the aim of ensuring that, by 2010, electricity produced on the basis of renewable energies represents 22% of total electricity consumption.
According to Greenpeace, shortcomings are due to: - the lack of any clear indication that the strategy proposed by the Commission will be adopted as such by the governments; - the lack of action aimed at reducing the demand for energy by adopting stricter norms; - the lack of reference to the energy tax, to the elimination of subsidies on fossil fuels, and to a public procurement policy that respects the environment - three aims that appeared in the Commission document; - the lack of any explicit reference to the waste prevention policy. "For now, some countries like Germany and Spain seem to have won the day. By protecting their obsolete and polluting coal industry, they have blocked important measures for combating climate change", deplores Michel Raquet, Greenpeace expert on global warming.
Mitigated satisfaction for paragraph on climate change
The Summit's conclusions confirm the Union's aim to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in order to allow it to be enforced in 2002. Greenpeace, the WWF and FoE are delighted, recalling that, in order to achieve the Kyoto objectives, it is essential to introduce effective instruments such as substantial energy taxation and the rapid elimination of subsidies on fossil fuels.
Green MEP Alexander de Roo toned things down by regretting that the Heads of State and Government, although recognising that the Kyoto Protocol only represents a first stage, had not taken the Commission's proposal on board with a commitment for further reduction of greenhouse gases for the post Kyoto period, at 1% annually between 2010 and 2020. (See also "A Look Behind the News" of 18/19/21 June).