The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
The Deputy Permanent Representative, Andy Lebrecht, represented the United Kingdom at the Environment Council on 20 December in Brussels. I was unable to attend due to severe weather disrupting travel between the United Kingdom and Belgium.
The Council reached political agreement on the regulation concerning the placing on the market of biocidal products. The UK welcomed the political agreement as a risk-based compromise which strikes the right balance between protecting health and environment from the biocides themselves but also from the harmful organisms that biocides are used to control.
The Belgian presidency presented the outcome of the third trilogue with the European Parliament on the regulation setting emission performance standards for new light commercial vehicles, as part of the EU’s integrated approach to reduce CO2 emissions from light-duty vehicles. During the exchange of views that followed Environment Ministers indicated their support for the compromise that had been reached, including the long-term target of average CO2 emissions of 147 grams per kilometre in 2020. The European Parliament is expected to vote on the proposal at its February plenary session.
The Council also adopted conclusions that welcomed the outcome of the Nagoya meeting of the convention on biodiversity in October, and committed the EU to implementation of the decisions taken.
Further conclusions were adopted on improving environmental policy instruments. Several member states expressed the importance they attach to having a seventh environment action programme to succeed the current one which covers the period up to 2012. The UK stressed the need for the new framework to be based on an assessment of the current sixth environment action programme, and highlighted the move to an environmentally sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient economy as a key challenge to be addressed. This could be achieved through focus on: integration of sustainability objectives in other policy areas; better implementation of existing legislation rather than new initiatives; and more involvement of society, incentivising and motivating behaviour change.
The Council also adopted a third set of conclusions, on sustainable materials management and sustainable production and consumption.
The Council took note of the presidency’s progress reports on the recast directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and on the proposal for a regulation regarding the possibility for member states to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs in their territory. The discussion on GMOs followed similar lines to the earlier discussion at Environment Council in October 2010, with many member states raising concerns about the proposal. The UK has yet to finalise its position on this dossier, but emphasised the need to find a way through the current impasse and to achieve legal clarity on the consistency of the proposal with WTO rules and the single market. Several member states focused on the need to consider clear criteria upon which national decisions on cultivation could be taken and welcomed the Commission’s proposal to discuss this further.
Ministers also exchanged views on the outcome of the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN convention on climate change at Cancun. They agreed that the outcome was positive and forward-looking, laying the foundation for further work and confirming the strength of a multilateral process. The UK supported Germany in their call for a new strategy building on Cancun, part of which had to be a move beyond the EU’s 20% target.