The European Commission presented a proposal for an Environment Action Programme (EAP) which is aimed at protecting nature, stimulating sustainable growth, creating new jobs and setting Europe on a path to prosperity and health within the limits of the planet.

The new European Commission's proposal for an Environment Action Programme (EAP) to guide EU environment policy up to 2020, is based on its recommendations for short term growth which emphasise the need for ensuring not just the growth of today, but also tomorrow within the limits of the planet. In June 2012, the Council already stressed that key elements of the future environment policy should be linked to the Europe 2020 Strategy.

The Programme includes concrete steps to be taken include phasing out environmentally harmful subsidies, shifting taxation from labour to pollution, drawing up partnership agreements between Member States and the Commission on implementation of EU environmental law, and developing a system for tracking environment-related expenditure in the EU budget.

In particular, the EAP identifies nine priority objectives, including protecting nature and strengthening ecological resilience; boosting sustainable, resource-efficient, low-carbon growth, and effectively addressing environment-related threats to health. The Programme also sets out a framework to support the achievement of these objectives through, inter alia, better implementation of EU environment law, state of the art science, securing the necessary investments in support of environment and climate change policy, and improving the way that environmental concerns and requirements are reflected in other policies.