European Union News - Environmnet

The European Commission launched a new joint campaign together with businesses, environment groups and universities to promote climate solutions. The campaign seeks to put practical solutions at the centre of the climate change debate and demonstrate how climate action can increase welfare and bring economic benefits to European citizens.

The nuclear stress tests made to the nuclear power plants in Europe show that the standards of safety of nuclear power plants in Europe are generally high but further improvements in the safety features of almost all European nuclear power plants are recommended.

The Council adopted the energy efficiency directive with the Finnish delegation abstaining and the Spanish and Portuguese delegations voting against. According to the Council, the directive establishes a common framework of measures for the promotion of energy efficiency within the Union in order to achieve its 2020 20% headline target on energy efficiency. Each member state will also be obliged to set an indicative national energy efficiency target.

The European Commission made a proposal to tackle 'biopiracy' and facilitate nature-based research. In particular, the proposal intends to protect the rights of countries and of indigenous and local communities that allow their genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge to be used, while also giving researchers in Europe improved, reliable access to quality samples of genetic resources at low cost with high legal certainty.

Eurostat published a short publication presenting past trends and latest data for each of the headline indicators of the strategy at EU and Member State level. These indicators show progresses but also that there is still work to do to achieving the strategy's goals. The Europe 2020 strategy aims at establishing a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy with high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion.

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement which lays down approval and market surveillance rules for all L-category vehicles in the EU, i.e. about 30 million mopeds, scooters, motorbikes, all-terrain vehicles and quads. According to MEPs, the agreement will make motorbikes safer and greener.

An EU-funded research project, the Eurocloud project, looks set to drastically cut the electricity and the installation costs of servers in cloud computing data centres. It has adapted low-power microprocessor technologies, typically used in mobile phones, to work on a much larger scale. Preliminary measurements show that using these technologies reduces power needs by 90%, compared to conventional servers.

A report published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) shows that many parts of Europe have persistent problems with outdoor concentrations of PM and ground level ozone. Overall, almost a third of Europe's city dwellers are exposed to excessive concentrations of airborne particulate matter (PM).

The European Environment Agency (EEA) published a report which analyses the development of a set of indicators to measure progress against targets to halt biodiversity loss. The agency stresses that the continuing loss of biodiversity is a matter of growing concern in Europe. Yet measuring the extent of the loss and the threat it poses is a huge challenge.

Mayors from across the European Union and China met in the Committee of the Regions (CoR), in Brussels, and signed an agreement signalling the next phase in co-operation as part of a joint effort in promoting sustainable cities. President of the CoR, Ramón Luis Valcárcel Siso, highlighted that the Forum offered the ideal platform to take a joint response to deal with these global challenges.

MEPs urged to member states that global efforts to combat illegal fishing be stepped up, and improvements made to agreements with third countries which allow EU vessels to fish in their waters in a Fisheries Committee meeting. They also asked for banning to remove shark fins on board vessels.