Updated September 1998 www.greennet.org.uk/fern The EU's Fifth Environmental Action Programme1. BackgroundThe Fifth Environmental Action Programme was elaborated in the early 1990s as a response to the perceived failure of regulatory measures to achieve the Community's environmental standards. It took as its model the Dutch National Environment Plan, which was based on a combination of regulatory, market and voluntary measures, and attempted to extrapolate this approach to the Community level.Adopted in 1993, the Fifth Environmental Action Plan defines strategic long-term goals for EU environmental policy from 1993 to 2000. The Programme aims to achieve sustainable development through: i) integration of the environmental dimension into all major policy areas; ii) widening the range of policy instruments (education and information; technological development; incorporation of environmental costs in prices; financial support mechanisms, etc.); iii) shared responsibility among all societal actors (public and private). The Fifth Environmental Action Programme is divided into five 'target sectors': industry, energy, transport, agriculture (including forests), and tourism; and seven 'themes': climate change, acidification/air quality, urban environment, coastal zones, waste management, water resources, and biodiversity. The Programme sets out objectives for each of these areas – divided into Community and 'global' levels - and describes the targets and general actions needed to meet each objective. 2. Forests The objectives, targets and actions for forests are very broad (see Box I). Some Community-level objectives have been fulfilled: in February 1997, the Council agreed to extend the Regulation on protecting the Community's forests against fire, including spending a further 70 MECU on such protection in the period 1997-2002. The programme for afforestation of agricultural land, on the other hand, remains largely unachieved; moreover, where Member States have carried on afforestation activities, they have often used inappropriate species. Nor have proposals for action at the global level been realised. These comprise a wide-ranging programme of forest, biodiversity, climate and sustainability measures, integrating the principle of prevention, targeted development funding, and codes of conduct for enterprises. A particularly important global forest action set out in the Programme is 'reduced timber consumption'. No concrete action has been taken to fulfil that goal, even though the programme as a whole is designed to 'reduce wasteful consumption of resources'. The Community, as the world's second largest consumer of timber, is in a strong position to influence consumption levels. 3. Review and revision of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme A provision in the Fifth Environmental Action Programme required that a Programme review be undertaken before the end of 1995. The Commission put out a draft Decision on that review which was strongly criticized by both NGOs and the European Parliament for lacking clear and obligatory targets and timetables. A final text of the Decision which incorporates a number of Parliament's demands has now been agreed by both the Council and the Parliament, meeting in the Conciliation Committee. These include:
The Decision reconfirms the general approach of the original 5AP, but aims to improve implementation of the Programme from now to the year 2000. It does this by identifying five priority areas for more effective action:
The Conciliation Committee also agreed that four Commission statements – on agriculture, environmental liability, enforcement and waste management – will be published in the Official Journal together with the final Decision itself. Box I – The Fifth Environmental Action Programme: policy goals related to forests
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