Archive:Environment statistics introduced

Latest update of text: June 2015. Planned article update: May 2016.

Eurostat, in close partnership with the European Environment Agency, provides environmental statistics, accounts and indicators supporting the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the European Union’s environmental policies, strategies and initiatives. Eurostat produces statistics and accounts on environmental pressures, impacts on the state and change of environmental quality and on the measures to avoid or mitigate impacts on the environment. Environmental accounts describe the relationship of the environment with the economy, including the impacts of the economy on the environment and the contribution of the environment to the economy.

European environmental accounts

Environmental accounts analyse the links between the environment and the economy by organising the environmental information in a way that is consistent with the accounting principles of national accounts. Environmental economic accounts can be used, for example, to identify: which are the most polluting activities or the ones that most deplete natural resources; what is the role of government and households; how expensive it is to protect the environment and who pays for it; how large is the environmental economy within the overall economy; how large is the production and consumption of natural resources and energy.

The environmental accounts methodology is based on the system of integrated environmental and economic accounting (SEEA 2012), published by the United Nations, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the World Bank.

The legal basis for European environmental accounts is Regulation 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts, which so far includes six modules, namely air emissions accounts, environmental taxes, material flow accounts, energy accounts, environmental protection expenditure and the environmental goods and services sector.

This legislation strengthens the coherence and availability of environmental accounts on an EU-wide basis by providing a legal framework for their compilation, including methodology, common standards, definitions, classifications and accounting rules.

Sustainable development strategy

Sustainable development remains a fundamental objective of the EU under the Lisbon Treaty. The sustainable development strategy, which deals in an integrated way with economic, environmental and social issues, provides a long term vision and constitute the overarching policy framework for all EU policies and strategies.

Several environmental indicators have been chosen as sustainable development indicators (see the article on Statistics for European policies and high-priority initiatives) for an assessment of the progress achieved towards the goals of the sustainable development strategy. Examples of environmental headline indicators managed by Eurostat include resource productivity (as an indicator for sustainable consumption and production) and greenhouse gas emissions by sector (as an indicator for climate change). Several other environmental indicators are used to monitor progress in relation to an efficient use of natural resources, environmental impacts on public health and the impact of transport and energy on climate change.

The seventh EU environment action programme (7th EAP)

Environment action programmes have guided the development of the EU’s environment policy since the early 1970s. The current EU environment action programme — referred to as the 7th EAP — was adopted by Decision 1386/2013 of the European Parliament and Council in November 2013 under the title ‘Living well, within the limits of our planet’; it guides the EU’s environment policy up to 2020. The programme draws on a number of recent strategic initiatives, including the resource efficiency roadmap, the biodiversity strategy and the low carbon economy roadmap. The programme is focused on nine priority objectives in three groups.

Key objectives:

to protect, conserve and enhance the EU’s natural capital;
to turn the EU into a resource-efficient, green, and competitive low-carbon economy;
to safeguard the EU's citizens from environment-related pressures and risks to health and well-being.

Enabling objectives:

better implementation of legislation
better information by improving the knowledge base;
more and wiser investment for environment and climate policy;
full integration of environmental requirements and considerations into other policies.

Horizontal (cross-cutting) objectives :

to make the EU's cities more sustainable;
to help the EU address international environmental and climate challenges more effectively.

Responsibility for achieving the programme’s goals will be shared by the EU and the Member States. Practical steps to be taken include phasing out environmentally harmful subsidies, shifting taxation from labour to pollution, drawing up partnership implementation agreements between Member States and the European Commission on the implementation of environmental laws, and developing a system for reporting and tracking environment-related expenditure in the EU budget.

As for the previous programme, Eurostat’s statistics, accounts and indicators will contribute to the implementation of the 7th EAP, playing a particularly important role under the enabling objectives.

Europe 2020 — Europe’s growth strategy

At the European Council meeting of 26 March 2010, EU leaders set out their plans for a Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The strategy includes three targets specifically related to the environment and climate change: greenhouse gas emissions 20 % lower than 1990; 20 % of energy from renewables by 2020; and a 20 % increase in energy efficiency by 2020. As part of the sustainable growth priority one of the flagship initiatives concerns a resource-efficient Europe.

Resource efficiency means using limited resources — metals, other minerals, fuels, water, land, timber, fertile soil, clean air and biodiversity — in a more sustainable manner. This flagship initiative aims to promote the decoupling of economic growth from the use of resources, support the shift towards a low-carbon economy, protect biodiversity, increase the use of renewable energy sources, modernise the transport sector, and promote energy efficiency.

Resource efficiency may help to stimulate technological innovation, boost employment in the developing environmental goods and services sector, open up new export markets and benefit consumers through more sustainable products.

Eurostat’s environment statistics and accounts will accompany the Europe 2020 strategy and contribute to help monitor its success through a set of statistics and indicators, in particular for the areas of the sustainable use of natural resources and resource efficiency.

Initiatives for water, waste, hazardous substances and resources

The European Commission Communication ‘A Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources’ was endorsed by EU Member States in December 2012. This blueprint is intended to combine a stocktaking of the achievements of the Water Framework Directive with an analysis of policy needs in the water domain for the years to come.

Eurostat’s statistics on water quantities, together with data on water quality reported to the European Environment Agency, will help measure the success of this initiative.

The EU's approach to waste management is based on the 'waste hierarchy' which sets the following priority order when shaping waste policy and managing waste at the operational level: prevention, (preparing for) reuse, recycling, recovery and, as the least preferred option, disposal (which includes landfilling and incineration without energy recovery). The objectives and targets set in EU legislation have been key drivers to improve waste management, stimulate innovation in recycling, limit the use of landfilling, and create incentives to change consumer behaviour. Turning waste into a resource is one key to a circular economy.

Eurostat produces basic statistics and indicators for the EU’s waste policy. Since the Regulation 849/2010 entered into force in 2010, the usability and policy relevance of waste statistics have increased. Eurostat’s environmental data centre on waste is the main source of data and background information on waste generation and management in the EU, presenting statistics for key waste streams by waste category and by economic activity and treatment method, such as recycling and disposal.

Since June 2007, Europe has had a chemicals policy based on the REACH Regulation 1907/2006. REACH stands for registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. Eurostat publishes two indicators on chemicals management on an annual basis: the production of toxic and of environmentally harmful chemicals.

Eurostat maintains the environmental data centre on natural resources, which has a strong focus on statistics, accounts, indicators and information regarding resource efficiency and natural resources.

Further Eurostat information

Main tables

Environment, see: 'Main tables' under each theme

Database

Environment, see: 'Database' under each theme

Dedicated section

Other information

Environmental data centres

External links