Alignment of environmental reporting obligations: Presidency reaches provisional deal with Parliament

The Austrian presidency of the Council today reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on improving the reporting requirements across a range of environmental legislation. The new regulation will ensure a more coherent and consistent approach to environmental reporting. By simplifying the existing reporting obligations, it will help reduce administrative costs, improve the quality of available data for future evaluations and increase transparency.

Today we are making it easier for national administrations to collect environmental information and easier for everyone to access this information. This is about saving costs, reducing bureaucracy and increasing transparency. But it also helps us improve the way we use data to address environmental concerns.

Elisabeth Köstinger, Austrian federal minister of sustainability and tourism

The regulation groups together in one proposal amendments which will apply to ten legislative acts:

• the sewage sludge directive 86/278/EEC;
• the noise directive 2002/49/EC;
• the infrastructure for spatial information in the European Community (INSPIRE) directive 2007/2/EC;
• the birds’ directive 2009/147/EC;
• the European pollutant release and transfer register (E-PRTR) regulation (EC) No 166/2006;
• the animal testing directive 2010/63/EC;
• the EU timber regulation (EU) No 995/2010;
• the forest law enforcement, governance and trade (FLEGT) regulation (EC) No 2173/2005;
• the convention on the international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora (CITES) regulation (EC) 338/97;
• the environmental liability directive 2004/35/EC.

The presidency will submit the outcome of today’s talks for approval by member states at the Council’s Permanent Representatives Committee.

Background 

The regulation was presented by the European Commission on 31 May 2018. It is based on the findings of the Fitness Check evaluation on the reporting and monitoring of EU environment policy which the Commission finalized in June 2017. The Council reached its position on the draft regulation on 7 November. The European Parliament adopted its position on 23 October.

Negotiations between the Austrian Presidency and the European Parliament started on 15 November and ended in the provisional agreement today. If this agreement is confirmed by EU ambassadors of member states, the regulation can be submitted for approval to the European Parliament and then back to the Council for final adoption.

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