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The Environmental Challenge of EU Enlargement in Central and Eastern Europe Chapter 1Introduction Since the 1997 report from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA) on the environmental perspectives of EU enlargement(1), the pre-accession process has accelerated. There are now twelve EU applicant countries - ten from Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and two Mediterranean countries (Cyprus and Malta). In addition, Turkey's application for EU membership has been accepted. It is still uncertain when the first new members will be able to join or how many countries will be part of the next "wave". The earliest date for the next enlargement now being mentioned is the beginning of 2004(2). One of the questions viewed as important in the enlargement debate is whether the enlargement of the EU and the threshold requirement to approximate to EU standards will raise the level of environmental protection for Europe and the consequent implications for citizens of EU Member States such as Denmark. The answer to the question posed above is a qualified yes. The efforts to achieve higher levels of environmental protection to date by all of the CEE countries are paying off. Central Europe's notoriously polluted "black triangle" - the region where the territories of Poland, the Czech Republic and eastern Germany meet - has achieved massive cuts in polluting emissions since 1989(3). Though some of the CEE applicant countries are further along than others in bringing their legal and administrative frameworks into compliance with EU environmental requirements, all have significantly improved their capacity for environmental management. On the other hand, these short-term gains may need to be weighed against the long-term perspective. An enlarged European Union with 25 Member States (the current 15 plus the 10 applicant countries considered most likely to be ready in the short term) will have a very different dynamic. There is some concern that the enlargement might mean a slow-down in the shaping of environmental policy and law at EU level. The drive to comply with EU standards which has brought about such environmental gains in the CEE applicant countries, has not been present in the former Soviet Union countries known collectively as the CIS ("Commonwealth of Independent States"). While some individual improvements in environmental management have been achieved, most pollution reductions have been linked to closure of industrial plants due to economic decline. In the meantime, the public budgets of most of the CIS are shrinking, and much of the region's basic environmental infrastructure, e.g. water supply systems, is crumbling from lack of maintenance. Today, at EU level, political pressure is building to close enlargement negotiations with the more politically and economically advanced CEE applicant countries. So far, the institutions of the European Union have taken a strong position on the importance of approximation with the extensive EU environmental requirements. With the closure of the Environment Chapter for nine applicant countries, the focus must shift to monitoring to ensure that the CEE applicant countries live up to their promises to achieve full compliance by the time of accession, especially where no post-accession transition periods have been agreed. This report is a thematic report. It provides an update of the enlargement process and reviews many (but not all) of the environmental issues that must be addressed as part of the accession process. It focuses particularly on the investment-heavy environmental acquis and considers the cost implications of achieving compliance with these demanding requirements. It stresses that the Member States - as the final negotiators of the enlargement - must continue to pay close attention during this final stage of the enlargement process, in order to ensure that the environment remains an important issue and that the promises made by the applicant countries with regard to the Environment Chapter will be kept.
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