Brussels, 22/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - On the occasion of the World Biodiversity Day, on 22 May, the European Commission launches the prize for the green capital of Europe to be awarded each year to the town that has set the best example for an environmentally-friendly way of urban life and sustainable development.
The initiative comes at the time of the meeting in Bonn of delegates from 191 countries taking part in the 9th conference of the parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (COP 9, 19-30 May) to seek to agree on ways to counter the decline in biodiversity worldwide. European Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas and the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, will attend the ministerial part of this conference from 28 to 30 May.
Arrangements for awarding the prize for green capital of Europe were to be unveiled during the evening of 22 May during an inaugural ceremony at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels, attended by Stavros Dimas and Paddy Bourke, Mayor of Dublin and President of the Union of European Union capitals. Every European town of over 200,000 inhabitants may enter the competition. The winning towns for 2010 and 2011 will be selected by the end of the year by a panel composed of representatives from the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, the ICLEI (grouping local players working for sustainable development), the European Transport and Environment Federation (T&E), the Union of Capitals of the European Union, and the Committee of the Regions. The idea of this prize was launched in 2006 by Jüri Ratas, former mayor of Tallinn and current deputy speaker of the Estonian parliament. (A.N.)