Summary of EEA Bureau meeting of 13 June 2001

The agenda included the following items:

Progress report by the Executive Director
EEA reporting strategy
Draft Annual Work Programme 2002
EEA-DG Environment Memorandum of Understanding
European Topic Centre on Terrestrial Environment

Progress report

The Executive Director presented a progress report on the Agency’s activities from January to April 2001 which was welcomed by the Bureau. In particular following comments from the European Commission representative, the Bureau invited the Agency to take the necessary steps to adapt its reporting strategy and activities to the developing political agenda, notably the 6th EU Environmental Action Programme and the conclusions of the Lisbon and Gothenburg summits, to ensure a regular input to the European Commission’s spring synthesis report on progress in implementing the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.

In practical terms, for each spring synthesis report the Agency would need to provide preliminary data on the previous year in the early autumn before the synthesis report and a final update a couple of months later. Cooperation between the Agency and Eurostat will also need to be clarified.

EEA reporting strategy

The Executive Director informed the Bureau that, following the Stockholm summmit’s decision to review the EU’s progress in all dimensions of sustainable development at the annual spring meeting of the European Council, it would be appropriate to consider these Councils as policy events of major importance for the EEA.

The EEA therefore proposes to use the Environmental signals report series for publishing a selection of main indicators which can also be used for the spring sustainability review. For that purpose Environmental signals reports will be slimmed down to focus on key indicators, while other sectors and themes currently addressed by them will be highlighted in separate reports linked to their respective policy processes.

Draft Annual Work Programme 2002

The Executive Director presented a first draft of the Agency’s Annual Work Programme for 2002, which assumes that the 13 candidate countries in central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin will be EEA members by the start of the year. The first draft, presented to the Bureau for the guidance, is based on a core EU subvention of EUR 21 million and additional estimated resources of EUR 6.875 million from EFTA countries, new member countries, contributions from European Commission DGs and bank interest.

The Executive Director pointed out that the draft work programme would need to be adapted in the light of the outcome of the Gothenburg Summit.

EEA-DG ENV Memorandum of Understanding

The Bureau considered a draft Memorandum of Understanding between the Agency and the European Commission’s DG Environment which sets out guidelines for cooperation. The Bureau felt that signature of the MoU should take place by the end of 2001 at the latest.

European Topic Centre (ETC) on Terrestrial Environment

The Bureau approved the 2001 subvention to this ETC of EUR 400,000 and a technical annex laying down the work it is to carry out. At its meeting on 20 March the Management Board had designated the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) to lead the ETC consortium subject to improvement of the soil contamination and protection aspects of the UAB’s proposal. In the light of subsequent discussions it was decided to strengthen the ETC by including the Austrian and Italian environment protection agencies, UBA and ANPA, among the ETC partners.

The Bureau also took note of a verbal report on the functioning of the ETCs on air and climate change, water, nature and biodiversity, waste and material flows and collection of data sources.