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Strengthening Environmental Integration in the EU

Annex II

Areas of interest not included in the report

When selecting the areas for further investigation for this report a broad number of areas were touched upon, but due to the size of the project not included for further investigation. This work, however, might be of general interest for policy makers or other stakeholders looking for opportunities to contribute to policies.

This annex therefore consists of descriptions of the following four topics:

I.I Commission Work Programme for 2004
I.II Life-Cycle Thinking when Regulating Industrial installations
I.III Employment Guidelines
I.V Transport

I.I Commission Work Programme for 2004

Due to the institutional upheavals in 2004 (enlargement, a new Parliament and a new Commission) the Commission’s work programme is a more focussed document than normal, with the aim to deliver a “…programme that is as realistic as possible, both in terms of what it (the Commission) can deliver and the other EU institutions can absorb”, cutting out some of the initiatives envisaged in the Annual Policy Strategy. Priority is given in the document to just three of the Thematic Strategies - those on soil protection, waste prevention and recycling and pesticides - although work is still expect to be completed on the other Thematic Strategies not mentioned. The limitations to policy emerging in 2004 must be recognised – see table below for details of measures of interest included in the work programme, when they are expected to be produced and which Directorate General (DG) will be putting them forward.

The Communication published alongside the list of proposals (COM(2003)645) stated that Commission priorities for 2004 were to be accession, stability and sustainable growth including work on the Lisbon process and next steps in the Sustainable Development Strategy. The Communication also, importantly, outlined details of which DGs will undertake extended impact assessments and on what legislative proposals. Preliminary impact assessments have been produced for each of the proposals, these are available at:

 http://europa.eu.int/comm/off/work_programme/index_en.htm

The impact assessments will either be completed by the DG responsible for the development of a proposal alone; or by the DG responsible and an Inter-departmental Steering Group (ISG); or by a group of DGs with a particular interest in a proposal (including the responsible DG).

Table presenting measures of interest highlighted in the 2004 work programme including details of date expected for release, DG responsible an, in the case of legislative proposals, DGs to be involved in the extended impact assessments (ExIA)

I.II Life-Cycle Thinking when Regulating Industrial installations?

Industrial installations can be connected across many sites through their supply chains; however, permits related to pollutants are normally issued to single installations. One could imagine that when issuing permits regulators could take into account emission cuts in other parts of the ‘life-cycle’ of a product. The authority would then accept a trade-off between emission increases at the site of the installation and emission cuts in the consumption phase of the product (ten Brink & Farmer, 2004).

A recent study by ten Brink & Farmer (2004) shows that the use of permits to cover ‘chains’ of installations is limited. The study found that in the Netherlands in some cases licensing authorities start to take account of wider life-cycle issues in setting permit conditions. In Norway, life-cycle issues can also be taken into account in setting permit conditions as legislation allows conditions to be set such that they address the dangers of creating environmental damage. In Sweden a recent court case has confirmed that it is possible to take into account life-cycle issues relating to products being produced within the permit procedure for an installation. However, the implications are not clear. For example, there is still debate over whether it is possible to set conditions with regard to the products from an installation, ie whether it is responsible for the lifecycle of the products it produces. This has yet to be resolved.

According to the ten Brink & Farmer study the legal situation in most countries prevents formal permitting on chains of installations, but one country has in a survey suggested that some view of elements in a chain might already be possible under the IPPC Directive. The study emphasises, that while this might have some environmental benefits, it poses a number of problems as e.g.:

• A chain would involve different regulatory bodies adding to complexity with costs to the regulator and industry.
• Regulation involving many legal entities in a single measure could result in a loss of legal certainty over obligations.
• Assessing the environmental impacts is very difficult, given that each could have different types of emissions and emissions could transform during through the chain (e.g. VOC to CO2).
• Life-cycle analysis can be difficult and involve uncertainty, which build into a permit can lead to higher costs due to complexity.

This project has not explored the topic further as there seems to be many potential problems linked to this idea – e.g. chain permitting could also potentially be used as a purely cost saving strategy with no environmental benefits and the new flexibility might have negative impacts on pushing innovation and the development of cleaner technologies. However, it is worthwhile keeping an eye out for developments in this area if the IPPC Directive is amended at some point.

I.III Employment Guidelines

On the basis of new provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty, the Luxembourg European Council in 1997 initiated the European Employment Strategy (EES), also known as ‘the Luxembourg process’. The Luxembourg process is a rolling programme of yearly planning, monitoring, examination and re-adjustment. Heads of State and Government agreed on a framework for action based on the commitment from Member States to establish a set of common objectives and targets for employment policy. The EES is designed as the main tool to give direction to and ensure co-ordination of the employment policy priorities to which Member States should subscribe at EU level. This co-ordination of national employment policies at EU level is built around several components, including the Employment Guidelines:

• Employment Guidelines: following a proposal from the Commission, the European Council shall agree every year on a series of guidelines setting out common priorities for Member States' employment policies.
• National Action Plan (NAP): Member State are to draw up an annual NAP, which describes how the Guidelines are put into practice.
• Joint Employment Report: The Commission and the Council are to jointly examine each NAP and present a Joint Employment Report. The Commission then is to present a new proposal to revise the Employment Guidelines accordingly for the following year.
• Recommendations: The Council may decide, by qualified majority, to issue country-specific Recommendations upon a proposal by the Commission.

The IPP element

The employment guidelines^[26] do not contain text on the environment. However, the process of the guidelines was part of this project due to the fact that the EES initiated a new ‘open method of co-ordination’. Due to the discussions on applying OMC in the environment policy field, it is relevant to understand how it has worked for the employment guidelines.

However, discussions are already starting on a forthcoming Commission communication on synergies between employment and social policies and environment policies. Therefore future opportunities to work on the link between employment and IPP may arise in the near future.

I.IV Transport

Noting that the IPP Communication does propose to start the application of IPP to products, rather than services, it is useful to review the Community’s competence over transport before exploring potential applications of IPP. The Community competence in transport has remained largely unchanged since the Treaty of Rome and the substantive provisions of the transport chapter of the Treaty can briefly be summarised as follows:

• The Community is to have common rules governing international transport, and conditions are to be agreed under which non-resident carriers can operate in all Member States.
• Measures are to be taken to improve transport safety.
• State aids are allowed for the purposes of ‘coordination of transport’ or to fulfil public service obligations.
• Discriminatory charges or other conditions (in effect against foreign carriers) are generally forbidden.

These requirements apply only to road, rail and inland waterways, but ‘other appropriate measures’ may also be taken, where necessary. In addition, there is a separate policy on the development of Trans-European Networks. The origin of the provisions is the need to facilitate free trade and free movement and therefore the provisions tend to focus on reducing barriers to these, while maintaining standards, eg relating to safety. Hence, there appears to be little potential scope for applying of IPP to EU transport policy. However, the development of internal market policies has had large impacts on developing IPP approaches in the transport sector.

In order that they should not act as a barrier to trade, emission limit values for local pollutants (i.e. not CO2) for road vehicles have been set at the European level since 1970. The initial focus was passenger cars, but the scope has been progressively broadened to cover heavy-duty vehicles, light commercial vehicles and motorcycles. The emission limit values are enforced through the type approval process, which effectively requires each new model of vehicle (or engine for heavy-duty vehicles) to undergo independent tests to prove that they emit less than the applicable emission limit value before they are can be marketed. These standards have been continually made more stringent, with stricter limit values being introduced every five years or so; the next stage of standards for cars is currently under discussion. In the last five years or so, the scope has become wider still to cover emissions from non-road mobile machinery, and thus emissions limit values have been introduced for railway engines and engines used in inland waterway vessels. In addition, in 2002, EC legislation was adopted that banned the use of certain dangerous substances in cars and set recycling targets for cars with the aim of encouraging manufacturers to design cars with disposal in mind. A recent Commission proposal would take these a step further and integrate the recycling standards into the type approval process.

Hence, to a large extent, environmental concerns are already integrated into the design of transport vehicles. For cars, consideration is given to the vehicle’s in-use emissions and its disposal. The emissions of heavy-duty vehicles, motor cycles, railway engines and inland watercraft are also, or soon will be, taken into account in the course of the design of these vehicles, although there are, as yet, no requirements to design these vehicles with disposal in mind. However, considering that the car is by far the most numerous transport vehicle, this need not be an immediate concern. One of the main emissions from transport is CO2. However, CO2 emissions from cars, the principal transport source, are addressed through a voluntary agreement with industry. The other principal gap is aircraft and sea-going ships, which tend to be ignored by EC legislation amongst other reasons because of the global nature of their use. Even here, however, the Commission is exploring ways of reducing emissions from ships and thought is being given to using emissions trading to reduce aviation’s CO2 emissions (see Section 3.4).

However, the environmental benefits of these various improvements have not led to equivalent improvements in transport’s environmental impact. The principal reason for this is the amount of vehicles, particularly cars, being used. While air pollution in most urban areas in the EU is improving, there are still significant problems in some cities in reducing air pollution to levels below those which damage human health – principally as a result of the amount of emissions from transport. Similarly, even though the average CO2 emissions from new cars are declining, transport’s total CO2 emissions have not shown a comparative decline. However, for the moment at least, the use of a product, in this case a transport vehicle, is probably outside the scope of potential application of IPP.

In summary, therefore:

• In-use considerations, such as emissions, are already integrated into the design of many vehicles used for transport.
• Design standards for the recycling of cars are also under development, while legislation already sets standards for recycling.
• Even though CO2 emissions are not integrated into vehicle design, another instrument exists – a voluntary agreement with industry – to reduce these emissions from cars, which is by far the largest source.
• Aviation and maritime transport vehicles have been largely excluded to date from the scope of EU legislation, but instruments are being explored.
• It is the use of transport – that is the number and extent of use of transport vehicles – that give rise to transport’s principal environmental problems. However, this is, at least for the moment, outside of the Commission’s IPP focus.

Fodnoter

^[26] Council Decision of 22 July 2003 on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States (2003/578/EC).

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Version 1.0 August 2006, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency