Eco-efficiency key to reaching Lisbon competitiveness targets

Two new Commission reports highlight the need to strengthen
eco-innovations and resources efficiency in order to make the EU
the most competitive knowledge economy in the world.

The Commission’s second Environmental Policy Review
(EPR) feeds into the debate on the mid-term review of the
Lisbon Strategy at the March European Council. The report monitors
the progress the EU has made in 2004 on its key environmental
goals.

Key messages of the 2004 EPR are:

• there is growing consensus that “environment policy
  and eco-innovation can promote economic
  growth and maintain and create jobs, contributing to
  competitiveness and employment”;
• the European eco-industry have been
  performing better than the rest of the economy; it employs more
  than 2 million people in Europe and continues to grow at around 5%
  per year;
• the biggest challenges are
  the implementation by member states of EU
  environmental legislation (one third of all open implementation
  cases for non implementation of EU law are in the environmental
  sector), better regulation and
  regulatory simplification which reduces the
  administrative and cost burden on the public sector and on
  companies.

In its first report on the implementation of the Environmental
Technologies Action Plan (ETAP) (see EURACTIV’s LinksDossier on
ETAP), the Commission takes stock of the good progress that has
been made in implementing the plan which was launched one year
ago. 

The report recommends:

• to establish “green investment funds” to
  mobilise risk funding, especially for small and medium-sized
  companies;
• te define environmental “performance targets”
  for key products, processes and services;
• to urge member states to produce “national road
  maps” for implementation of ETAP, with concrete measures
  and deadlines, and to draw up national action plans for green
  public procurement.

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