Internal wrangling threatens to delay green action plan

Date: 09/11/00

By Simon Coss

THE long-awaited EU-wide action plan for the environment risks being delayed by disagreements within the European Commission over its contents.

Aides to Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström say they still hope the sixth environmental action programme will be ready in time for a December meeting of Union environment ministers, but one added: "With my hand on my heart, I cannot promise anything."

Wallström's officials were due to send copies of the draft plan to her Commission colleagues last week to give them time to study the text before it is submitted for formal adoption by the institution and then passed onto member states for scrutiny. But these 'inter-service consultations' have been delayed because members of Wallström's private office (cabinet) have said they need more time to discuss details of the text with permanent officials in the environment directorate-general.

Officials have refused to reveal the cabinet's concerns, but one said that while both sides agreed on the overall strategy set out in the document, certain questions of "detail, substance and presentation" still needed to be thrashed out.

Insiders suggest Wallström's aides are trying to tone down the text to avoid opposition from other Commissioners, most notably enterprise supremo Erkki Liikanen, amid concern that the current version gives too much ground to green campaigners and should be more industry-friendly. But Wallström's officials say the proposals will concentrate on "greening the market", emphasising the use of policy instruments such as financial incentives for polluters to clean up their act rather than proposing a raft of punitive new rules.

The Commission hopes the sixth action plan will be more successful than its predecessor, which ends this year. In a detailed analysis of the fifth programme published recently, the EU executive acknowledged that while the scheme was full of good intentions, many of its recommendations were never put into practice. "We already have a great deal of legislation in place; the problem is that not much of it is implemented," said a Wallström aide.

The EU's environmental rules are among the bloc's most poorly respected laws. Almost every week, the Commission begins legal action against one government or other for failing to comply with Union legislation. But Wallström's aides say the new plan will not include measures to make it easier for the Commission to crack down on defiant member states. "To do that would require changes to the EU treaties and those sorts of measures are beyond the scope of a simple action plan," said one.

The long-awaited EU-wide action plan for the environment risks being delayed by disagreements within the European Commission over its contents.