The EU and the 21st century challenges: Energy and environment

Résumé du document

Stavros Dimas, Commissioner for Environment opined that though in recent times, Europe has made considerable progress in cleaning the air that we breathe; air pollution remains a serious problem and continues to damage our health and the environment.

The results of a poll published in March, 2008 by the European Commission show the strong European public opinion in favor of environmental protection: 95 % of the people who were questioned in the European Union (EU) consider environmental protection as an important question. Protection of the environment while assuring the supply of energy for the population is one of the major challenges of the 21th century. Being conscious of these stakes, the European Union emerged as one of the leaders in the global fight against climate change. Environmental and energy issues cannot be treated simply on a national scale. The Union thus acts with respect to the skills of member states, to coordinate national actions and develop more effective and better adapted European initiatives.

What are the challenges faced by EU with respect to energy and environment, and how may they resolve them?

Firstly, we will see that EU is conscious about energy and environmental stakes, has goals related to their protection, and has taken some measures to address issues related to them. We will also examine the divergent interests in the EU which limit the environmental and energy policies.

The conference of heads of state and government in Paris in 1972 opened the way to the implementation of a common policy in environmental protection. Since then, the European policy of the environment evolved, passing gradually from a set of minimal and thematic legislations, to a global and integrated strategy.

It aims at the conservation, protection and improvement of the quality of the environment, the protection of the health of the people, the careful and rational use of natural resources, as well as the implementation of the international plan, and the measures intended to face the regional or global problems of the environment. Europe intervenes in very varied domains with regard to the management of waste, noise pollution, atmospheric pollution, and water pollution, the conservation of nature and biodiversity, and industrial risks.

Tags: Kyoto Protocol, Environment policies of the EU, Energy policies of the EU

Extraits

[...] According to the road map adopted in 2007 during the COP 13, she had to be the opportunity, for 192 countries having ratified the Agreement, to re- negotiate an international agreement on the climate replacing the Kyoto protocol. Its success is very weak, and it is now necessary that Europe finds an agreement to present one only voice during the next big international congress, in Cancùn, later in this year. [...]

[...] The treaty on the Charter of the energy. In 1991, was adopted and European Charter of the energy intended to promote a cooperation between country of the EU and Eastern European countries. The treaty on the Charter of the energy and a protocol on the energy efficiency and the related environmental aspects, come into effect in 1998, came to transform into legally binding commitments the principles expressed in the Charter of the energy, among which the protection of the investments, the free transit and procedures defined by regulation of the disputes. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, it is the energy itself which established the European Communities in 1954, with the ESCS. B. EU has fixed measures and goals The signature of the Kyoto protocol in 1997 on the climate change so came to strengthen the commitments taken by the EU in environment and in sustainable development in conformance with its energy policy. It is this agreement which really threw the environmental action of the EU in the field of the energy. Then the European policy of the energy was developing in a context of sensitive increase of the prices of oil and of tension of the relations between the European Union and Russia, the main gas supplier of the European countries. [...]

[...] In biodiversity, the EU made a commitment to put an end to the decline of its sorts and its housing environments by 2010. It is the difficult objective that will require very important efforts. The legislation and the policies are already in position to take up this challenge, but their implementation has to change scale today. In particular, the EU wants to spread Natura on 2000 the European network of zones of protection of the animal species, the plants and their housing environments. [...]

[...] It is about the package 'energy- climate'. It is the natural interweaving of the energy and environmental problems that brings the European council to exceed this new stage in the development of the energy policy of the Union. This last basic salary of the ambitious objectives in energy efficiency and in renewable energies " The package energy climate " is an action plan to set up a common policy of the energy and to fight against the climate change. He reaffirms the objective of " three times 20 " (reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions with regard to the level of improvement in energy efficiency and part of the renewable energies in the total consumption of energy increased in by 2020). [...]