EfE – after Belgrade

The first pan-European Ministerial Conference within the Environment for Europe (EfE) process was held in 1991 at Dobris Castle in Czechoslovakia. European Environment Ministers, UN and other international bodies and non-governmental organisations, as well as the European Commission participated. The conference agreed an Environmental Action Programme (EAP) to combine efforts to ensure that the environment and sustainable development were taken into account in the transition of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe towards democracy and the market economy. Environment for Europe provides an ad hoc political framework to help mobilize and target the activities of many different stakeholders in order to achieve this objective.

Representatives of the European Commission and Environment Ministers from the region of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN ECE) have met since then at further conferences in Lucerne in 1993, in Sofia in 1995, in Aarhus in 1998, in Kiev in 2003 and in Belgrade in 2007.
Main actions under the Environment for Europe process have been driven forward by the following bodies:

The EAP has been implemented by the EAP Task Force based at the OECD which provides its secretariat. The EAP Task Force was co-chaired by the European Commission until 2008.

It worked closely with the Project Preparation Committee (PPC) to mobilise financing for environmental investments in transition countries. The PPC was internalised in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London in 2007.

Regional Environmental Centres have been established in Moscow, Chisinau, Tbilisi and Almaty, based on the model of the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe in Szentendre, Hungary.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has co-ordinated the preparation of reports presented at the Ministerial Conferences on the state of the pan-European environment. The fourth assessment of the Europe's environment was presented during the Belgrade Conference.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/pan-european/fourth-assessment

A number of UNECE regional conventions and protocols, including the Aarhus Convention (1998) have been signed at EfE conferences.

The Working Group of Senior Officials (WGSO) was responsible for preparing the ministerial conferences. This function was transferred to the UNECE Committee on Environmental Policy secretariat at Belgrade in 2007.

The European Commission was an active participant and supporter of the "Environment for Europe" process and its activities. From 2003 to 2007 the Commission for example provided some €3.5 million funding towards the work of the EAP Task Force and over €7 million for the EECCA Regional Environment Centres.

Since the early 1990s, when the EfE began, the pan-European region has undergone a huge transformation. The majority of central and eastern European countries originally targeted by the process are now members or candidates for membership of the European Union. The European Neighbourhood Policy, the Stabilisation and Association Process in South-eastern Europe , and the EU-Russia Strategic Partnership provide the major frameworks for environmental co-operation between the EU and the remaining non-EU countries in the process. For these reasons the Belgrade Ministerial Conference decided on a reform of the EfE process and set up guidelines in this respect. A plan of the reform is to be developed by UNECE/CEP by the end of 2008 and endorsed by UNECE in spring 2009.

Before the Belgrade Conference the Commission adopted a Communication on 'Commission Cooperation with the Environment for Europe Process after the 2007 Ministerial Conference in Belgrade', [COM(2007)262 final] that sets out the Commission's plans for its future involvement with EfE.