{"id":178817,"date":"2025-12-11T10:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T10:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178817\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T10:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T10:25:10","slug":"europes-2030-environment-policy-goals-slip-further-out-of-reach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/178817\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s 2030 environment policy goals slip further out of reach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just hours before the European Commission unveiled proposals<\/a> to scale back EU environmental regulations, the European Environment Agency (EEA) painted a gloomy picture of the bloc\u2019s lack of progress towards meeting its own nature and climate policy goals.<\/p>\n

In an annual report<\/a> published on Wednesday, the EEA confirmed that the EU is set to miss most of the objectives set out in the bloc\u2019s environment action programme to 2030, which include reversing biodiversity loss, boosting climate action, pursuing zero pollution, and creating a sustainable, circular economy.<\/p>\n

The Copenhagen-based environmental watchdog found no improvement in any of the 28 indicators it assessed \u2013 and warned that three of them had actually deteriorated since last year\u2019s survey.<\/p>\n

The goal of reducing the costs of weather- and climate-related events, previously considered to be \u201clikely off-track\u201d, is now expected to be missed. The EU is also likely to fail short in increasing public and private spending to combat pollution and environmental degradation.<\/p>\n

The thorny objective of increasing environmental levies as a share of the overall tax take \u2013 intended to steer citizens and businesses away from harmful activities and\u00a0 consumption patterns \u2013 was downgraded from \u201con track\u201d to \u201clikely off-track\u201d, with the trend steadily worsening.<\/p>\n

Outlook poor<\/p>\n

The bloc is unlikely or off-track to meet goals such as increasing CO2 removals though forest growth, biodiversity protection, energy efficiency, and renewable energy use.<\/p>\n

On the positive side of the balance sheet, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a reduction in premature deaths caused by air pollution, and an increase in green jobs are among the six out of 28 indicators where the EEA considers Europe to be likely or fully on-track \u2013 all unchanged from last year.<\/p>\n

The agency warned that more effective implementation of existing green rules was urgently needed, and that new laws should be put in place to reduce the EU\u2019s raw material consumption, change consumers habits, boast recycling, and tackle risks arising from climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also remains essential to continue to integrate environmental and climate objectives into industrial, agricultural and other policy domains\u201d the EEA said, despite the recent accumulation of global and political crises.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomic stability, security, strategic resilience and fairness all depend on a stable climate and healthy environment as Europe advances towards sustainability,\u201d the report reads.<\/p>\n

In some areas \u2013 including total waste generation, forest connectivity, fossil fuel subsidy cuts, and\u00a0 eco-innovation \u2013 the EEA was unable to ascertain progress due to a lack of data.<\/p>\n

One optimistic signal in what otherwise makes for grim reading: the EEA noted that several new green laws had been adopted too recently for their effects to be felt.<\/p>\n

(rh, aw)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just hours before the European Commission unveiled proposals to scale back EU environmental regulations, the European Environment Agency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-178817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}