Ministers are invited to discuss the European environmental programme, Natura 2000, on 25-27 August 2006 in Tuczno. Poland is currently under pressure from the Commission to fulfil European environmental requirements.
During the conference "Natura 2000 – Chance for Sustainable Development in Europe”, Poland is likely to try and promote its position and find allies to defend its stance among the other member states.
An issue currently being debated is the size and number of protected sites for each of the 10 new member states. Environment ministers from Finland and Germany are expected to to accept the invitation by their Polish counterpart.
The Commission rejected Poland’s proposals on Natura 2000 in April, saying they were “significantly insufficient”. Commission officials stated that they did not comply with the EU’s Birds and Habitat directives, adding that Poland should create 140 special protection areas, instead of the 72 proposed by its government.
Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski fuelled the discussions by indicating a possible downsizing of the programme. He said: “Natura 2000 has expanded so much that it is practically impossible to build anything." In a meeting with environmental groups he said that the number of habitats protected under the EU’s Natura 2000 conservation network should be cut because they hampered vital projects such as motorways.
Slawomir Mazurek of the Polish Environment Ministry acknowledged that “some mistakes” had been made during the development of Natura 2000 for Poland. He added that “some areas have been appointed without a detailed knowledge of what is in them. Local governments do not agree on many of those areas.”
Environmentalist groups have criticised the government’s position and claimed that Poland needed to take urgent steps to protect its environment. Environmentalists claim the Polish government could lose several hundred million euro in EU funds for projects in environmentally sensitive areas and irreversibly damage the environment if it does not comply. They fear that the EU might weaken its rules for these biodiversity issues.
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) expert on biodiversity, Andreas Baumüller, insisted that “Poland needs to do its homework”. He welcomed the general discussion, but said it was not right that Poland uses the political discussion in order to highlight its own problems of implementing the Natura 2000 programme. “This is the only country that has not managed to implement the programme, it seems that the Polish Minister of Environment does not understand what Natura 2000 is,” he stated.
A Birdlife International spokesperson said the meeting should be taken as a chance for Poland to find a compromise between the goals of economic development and environmental protection. According to EEB spokesperson Stefan Scheuer: "The Polish suggestion of reducing an already inadequate Natura 2000 allocation is based on the erroneous assumption that the proper implementation of the network hinders socio-economic development of any sort." Birdlife International says it is unlikely that Poland can keep up its current position, as all other member states have fulfilled their responsibilities.
The Natura 2000 programme, which was originally adopted in 1992, is aimed at protecting the member state’s most important wildlife areas and species. The legal basis of the programme is the Birds directive and the complementary Habitats directive. The directives require the establishment of Special Protection Areas (SPA’s) for birds and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC’s) respectively.
Poland has so far failed to comply with the European Birds and Habitat directives - the Commission has therefore initiated an infringement procedure in April 2006, which means that Poland is facing the risk of a court case and blocking of EU funds.
