The EU is committed to promoting sustainable “green growth” to protect nature and safeguard the health and quality of life of people living in the EU. As a global actor, the EU is also committed to encouraging sustainable growth all over the world in recognition that environmental concerns are global, not just local.
The 7th Environment Action Programme (EAP) is the guiding policy for EU environmental action until 2020:
It identifies three key objectives:
- to protect, conserve and enhance the Union’s natural capital
- to turn the Union into a resource-efficient, green, and competitive low-carbon economy
- to safeguard the Union’s citizens from environment-related pressures and risks to health and wellbeing
Four so called “enablers” will help Europe deliver on these goals:
- better implementation of legislation
- better information by improving the knowledge base
- more and wiser investment for environment and climate policy
- full integration of environmental requirements and considerations into other policies
Two additional horizontal priority objectives complete the programme:
- to make the Union’s cities more sustainable
- to help the Union address international environmental and climate challenges more effectively.
The programme entered into force in January 2014. It is now up to the EU institutions and the Member States to ensure it is implemented, and that priority objectives set out are met by 2020.
Quoted from https://ec.europa.eu/environment/action-programme/