Brussels, 14/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - On the eve of the European Council of Barcelona, European environmental NGOs were expressing their concerns and the depth of their disappointment that sustainable development should have been overlooked in the preparations for the Summit. For this subject to be given the place it deserves in the work of the Heads of State and Government, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) stresses, in a press release, the importance of creating a coalition with the European Trade Union Confederation and the platform of European social NGOs. Their joint contribution to the summit, entitled "Placing the economy at the service of sustainable development" was presented in Barcelona on Thursday.
"The credibility of the EU's Sustainable Development Strategy is at stake here. It appears that the Commission is unwilling to lead the follow-up to the Strategy, and we therefore demand that the Spanish Presidency steer the Summit towards encouraging greater sustainable development", explains Ralph Hallo, President of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).
The EBB deplores the fact that sustainable development should not be on the list of priorities contained in the summary report prepared by the Commission to assess implementation of the Lisbon Process, whereas "too little has been achieved since the Gothenburg Summit" where the Community strategy for sustainable development was defined.
Like Parliament, it considers that the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development must be fully integrated in the economic dimension, and recommends the setting up of instruments and indicators for the three dimensions of sustainable development. Here, it welcomes Parliament's request concerning the drawing up of a list of structural indicators to measure environmental progress, and calls for the setting up of indicators for chemical products, bio-diversity, fisheries, the use of raw material, sustainable farming to enable the strategy to be evaluated in the summary report to be prepared for the European Council of 2003.
The EEB in particular backs Parliament's request in favour of strengthening implementation of the Cardiff Strategy on integrating the environment in sectoral policies, as essential element of the sustainable development strategy.
Spanish Presidency suffers wrath of WWF
In a press release, it is the Spanish Presidency that WWF attacks (World Wide Fund for Nature), accusing it having dropped sustainable development from the Summit's agenda, and that "despite the fact that the European Commission believes it is a major topic for the Summit and that Socialist leaders will discuss a paper prepared by Swedish Prime Minister, Goran Persson (see EUROPE of 6 March, p.13).
"The message from the Spanish Presidency seems to be that safeguarding the world's natural resources is no longer a priority. Under the Swedish Presidency, Europe's leaders agreed to forge a global partnership for sustainable development to be launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August. But the Spanish Presidency wants to scrap the debate on the core elements of this partnership (….) and to finish the "Cardiff Process" of putting environmental protection and sustainable development at the heart of all Council policies, as required by the Amsterdam Treaty", WWF deplores.
Recalling that a year ago, European leaders had acknowledged that sustainable development called for global solutions, Tony Long, WWF Director, accuses the Spanish Presidency of "wanting the EU to forget about its global responsibilities".