Environmental challenge for accession ten

Date: 28/05/03

By David Cronin

THE ten countries due to join the EU next May lack the resources needed to ensure that the Union's environment laws will be respected, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors.

The Luxembourg-based financial watchdog estimates that it could cost the new member states, along with Romania and Bulgaria, up to €110 billion over a decade to conform with the EU's green statute book.

In all, the countries are required to put into effect some 140 directives on everything from water quality to industrial pollution control. But the report states that "a major factor hindering the achievement of results" is the limited financial and administrative means of environment ministries.

That finding is partly based on an audit of 19 twinning schemes, which involved civil servants or experts from existing member states being seconded as advisors in the ministries of budding EU countries.

"In most cases, staff in the ministries of environment were unable to dedicate themselves full-time to working alongside representatives of the member state, often because the ministries were under-resourced and could not find the time to integrate the additional tasks associated with the twinning covenant into their regular work," the report states. It also refers to a brain-drain of environment officials, leaving their ministries for more lucrative jobs in the private sector.

Maarten Engwirda, the member of the Court who monitors EU funding in central and eastern Europe, said: "For the environment problem some solution will have to be found involving more continuity and more staff. How that is done is a political question and I'll leave it to the [European] Commission, Council [of Ministers] and Parliament to decide."

The auditors also found the Commission lacked resources to help applicant countries deal with the slew of environmental laws. Even though Poland, the largest of the ten incoming states, was allocated €133 million in pre-accession environmental aid in 2000, just one Commission official was tasked with overseeing how the money was spent.

The report also pinpoints cases where the Commission approved the financing of water plants "where there was a clear risk that the capacity foreseen would prove too large", with the result that EU money was "uneconomically used" and costs were "greater than necessary".

For example, the Bielsko Biala plant in Poland, which received €5 million from the Union's Phare programme for eastern Europe, has tanks with a capacity for handling 80,000 cubic metres per day whereas demand is for only 55,000 cubic metres per day.

In addition, the auditors referred to a case in Bulgaria where not enough EU funding was allocated. They say the original budget of €34 million earmarked to repair a waste water treatment plant in Sofia was deemed by a consultant "to be the necessary minimum" for carrying out the work properly.

"Nevertheless, the Commission subsequently reduced the budget to €22.4 million," the auditors note. "As a result, the limited scope of the project meant that there continued to be a real risk that the plant would break down, posing a serious threat of pollution to local rivers and ultimately the Danube."

Responding to the findings, the Commission echoed concerns about the applicant states' environment ministries. "The acute human resource constraints in administration can only be fully overcome through growth and development, underpinned by the economic security and solidarity provided through membership [of the EU]," the Commission said.

A report by the European Court of Auditors has suggested that the accession countries may not have sufficient financial resources to ensure that the EU's environmental laws will be respected.