Brussels, 11/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - By adopting their strategy for integrating environmental concerns in the Community's external policies on 11 March, the Foreign Ministers of the Fifteen bent to the exercise commissioned of all Council formations by the European Council of Cardiff in 1998, to ensure that they contribute to sustainable development, each in its sphere of competence. This sectoral strategy will be handed to the European Council of Barcelona. The General Affairs Council being instructed to co-ordinate the integration strategies of other Council formations, its won strategy intends "providing a framework to an coherent and ambitious approach to the Union's environmental concerns in its external relations", and thus contribute to the goal of sustainable development, as comprehensive plan within the Union.
Its goals are: 1) to promote the environmental dimension in sustainable development at world level by stressing the need to uncouple economic growth and environmental deterioration; 2) guarantee that account is taken of environmental considerations and sustainability in all relevant policies at international level; 3) tackle global environmental problems by backing existing multilateral agreements (Conventions on climate change, bio-diversity, desertification, chemical products) or international processes (sustainable management of forests); 4) take account of the protection and fair distribution of resources in country by country strategies and bilateral and regional agreements; 5) encourage grater environmental responsibility a political and institutional level, through political dialogue and supporting institutions and civil society.
The Council stresses that the European Union must fully use synergies between political dialogue, trade negotiations and development co-operation if it wants to convince all its partners of the importance of granting priority to the "Environmental" pillar of sustainable development.
With all industrialised countries, the dialogue will have to be on environmental issues discussed at multilateral level (UN, WTO), the ratification and implementation of international agreements by the other industrialised countries, an more general issues such as the precautionary principle. With countries with a economy in transition and developing countries, the Council intends: a) centring the political dialogue on institutional reform, fair access to natural resources and implementation of international conventions; b) stress that long-term development strategies must be based on macroeconomic conditions favouring growth, benefiting the poorest people while guaranteeing the sustainable management of the environment; c) use the integrated approach that reigns over negotiations over regional or bilateral agreements (covering trade, economic and commercial policies) to include environmental aspects; d) integrate environmental concerns in country by country and region by region strategy documents, resting on the thematic procedures established in the Council and Commission declaration that frames the Union's new development policy.
To all the Union's external policies, the Council sets as goal to encourage the improvement of human rights, the principles of democracy and sound management of public affairs for environmental purposes, of guaranteeing that environmental factors are taken full into account in conflict prevention (access and use of natural resources, environmental dimension in post-conflict reconstruction, infrastructure projects, disarmament activities).
Environmental integration will also have to occur in trade negotiations within the WTO to ensure that the multilateral trade system and environmental agreements back each other mutually, in the implementation of the Doha Development Agenda, and in international investments, through international codes of conduct.
To assess progress in implementing the strategy, the Council has set a timetable for international measures (prepare the initiatives in the field of water by September 2002, prepare an action plan for the implementation of legislation on forests for October 2002, launch environmental negotiations at the WTO in 2002). Objectives and indicators have been drawn up to assess, on the one hand, the integration policy (effects of sustainable development on bilateral dialogue with third countries and regional fora, presence of a "sustainability" component in trade negotiations, environmental analysis in strategy documents by country and region, allocation of the budget for assistance linked to the environment in indicative programmes), and, on the other, the structural integration programme (allocation of a portfolio "Sustainable Development" in the relevant "External Relations" services, environmental cover in the Commission's delegations abroad, participation of the staff of External Relations in international negotiations on the environment, and vice versa).