EU acceding countries facing challenge of applying green laws

European environment commissioner Margot Wallström has told acceding countries of the stiff challenge they now face in applying European Union environment laws.

At a meeting in Brussels with environment ministers of the 10 acceding countries, including Malta, and three candidate countries, she said implementation of the environment acquis was a "difficult nut to crack".

"Implementation goes hand in hand with enforcement. It isn't enough to have the laws on your books, you need to apply them. Inside the Union we have started in recent years to pay much more attention to breaches of rules and regulations."

The meeting was held precisely to discuss the financial and institutional challenges of implementing the EU's environmental laws.

It was also attended by enlargement commissioner Günter Verheugen and Greek environment minister Vasso Papandreou.

The EU has 149 environmental laws. According to the European Commission, 80 per cent of their transposition has been completed. Candidate countries must now make efforts to implement the environmental acquis within the deadlines agreed for the transitional periods.

The challenge is significant both financially and institutionally, as the cost of compliance with the environmental acquis is high.

According to Ms Wallström, candidate countries need to spend the equivalent of three per cent of their gross domestic product to ensure compliance with EU green laws. EU funding will be increased but the countries will have to find much of the money themselves.

Once accession has taken place, the structural and cohesion funds will replace the pre-accession funds as the main source of financing. Structural assistance for the new member states after accession for 2004 to 2006 amounts to about €22 billion.

From this figure, assistance for environmental investments through the cohesion fund alone will represent a threefold increase compared with the pre-accession period. Additional support for environmental protection will be provided by the structural funds and rural development programmes.