Background Document on the Fitness Check on Environmental Monitoring and Reporting
1.Introduction
The Commission has published a Roadmap setting out its intention for a "Fitness Check of monitoring and reporting obligations in environment policy". You can find this Roadmap on the Europa website[1], and you can also give feedback on it.
The Commission has already started a consultative process to gather the necessary evidence and views for the Fitness Check. As a first step, a public consultation has taken place from November 2015 to February 2016. Moreover, the Commission is organising a series of Stakeholder Workshops to present and discuss its work and to allow for the input of experts and interested stakeholders.
This second workshop will present the results of the above mentioned public consultation. In addition, the supporting work of the consultants will be presented and discussed.
This document sets out the objectives and the context for the Fitness Check as background for the discussions at the Workshop.
2.Objectives
The double objective of the Fitness Check is:
- to further develop more modern, effective and efficient monitoring and reporting for EU environment policy as a necessary step towards delivering a better environment. This will reduce pressure on the public and private sector contributing to reporting, whilst also filling information gaps and thereby contribute to the Regulatory Fitness (REFIT) objectives.
- to contribute to the Commission's priority to create a Union for Democratic Change, making environmental information more visible and accessible to citizens, and achieving higher standards of transparency and accountability.
The initiative is in line with the objectives of the 7th Environment Action Programme to improve implementation and the knowledge and evidence base for Union environment policy[2]. It will contribute to the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy, in particular the interoperability of e-government services across Member States as part of the free flow of data and interoperability initiatives. This will open up new opportunities for creating jobs and growth as environmental data can be an important source of "big data" for businesses. This initiative will also improve the sharing and re-use of data provided by Member States' public authorities (provide once, use often).
More specifically, our objectives are:
- lowering costs and limiting hassle for those providing and using the information, e.g. by minimising reporting to where the needs are.
- better monitoring on the ground as having the information we really need in a reliable, timely and comparable manner should lead to better implementation, compliance and accountability;
- making the maximum use of the information that already exists. Valuable information can be collected but not used to its full extent, especially across policy areas.
- increasing transparency and accountability through open data, making all information publicly available (in a user-friendly and easy-to-digest way) within the legal framework for protection and use of information.
- comparing Member State approaches and performances demonstrating a comparable ambition and level playing fieldand allowing best practice to be shared.
- facilitating Better Regulation in the EU environment policy cycle by having astronger evidence base on drivers the pressure on the environment, the state of the environment and our responses.
3.Scope of the Fitness Check
Information flows from the local level to the national level and on to the EU or international level need to be looked at so that the right information is collected, processed, validated and used in an effective and efficient manner. The Commission services will focus in this Fitness Check on the interface it can influence most, which is the reporting from the national or sub-national level to the EU level institutions.
The Fitness Check will look at some 55 pieces of environmental legislation[3]. Following the initial collection of information, this list is currently under review and will be updated on the web page shortly.
To get a picture of stakeholder views, the Commission launched an online public consultation from November 2015 to February 2016. A more detailed summary of the public consultation is available as a separate document for the workshop.
Figure 1: Information flow and uses from monitoring data at local level which is then reported to the different governance levels. The fitness check focuses on reporting made to the EU institutions.
As part of the follow up, the Commission services are developing a detailed inventory, building on the EEA's ReportNet[4], to get a better understanding ofthe strengths and weaknesses of current practices and to identify good examples to follow. The Commission is also looking in more detail into costs and benefits of reporting. The interim results of all this work is presented at the workshop.
4.The link to other initiatives
The Commission Work Programme 2016[5] includes two reporting related Fitness Checks, one on environment policy and another on energy and related climate policy. Both Fitness Checks will ascertain whether there are potentials for simplification and burden reduction as well as evaluate to what extent the current obligations are coherent, effective, efficient and add EU value.
There are also many evaluations in the Regulatory and Fitness (REFIT) programme which will play a role in delivering the monitoring and reporting vision, such as the evaluation on the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive and the evaluation on the European Pollutants Release and Transfer Register (EPRTR) which are both progressing in parallel.
The Commission is also putting in place an Environment Implementation Review[6], which will rely in part on the evidence base from environmental monitoring and reporting. There are already good examples (e.g. on air quality) where existing monitoring and reporting provides a clear and comparable picture on the implementation progress in all the Member States, the "distance to target" and causes for insufficient implementation, as well as measures taken to address non-compliance.
The Fitness Check will also examine whether current monitoring and reporting obligations follow best practices. The Commission will also improve the way in which it applies the "provide once, use often" principle is translated into practice.
5.Timing
The Fitness Check will be elaborated in line with the Better Regulation Guidelines and presented in Spring 2017. The Fitness Check will be accompanied by a Communication which sets out the next steps envisaged as a result of the Fitness Check.
Reporting improvements identified during the Fitness Check process (including through other REFIT evaluations) that can be delivered without legislative change will be implemented immediately. For example, the proposals to revise waste legislation as part of the Circular Economy package[7]have already put forward a substantial simplification of reporting requirements.
More information
An update on the progress of the Fitness check as well as all relevant documents including those of the Stakeholder Workshops can be found at:
Annex – Evaluation questions for the Fitness Check (see Roadmap)
Relevance- Is the process of environmental monitoring and reporting still relevant (as opposed to harvesting of data)?
- Are all environmental monitoring and reporting requirements still relevant?
- Are environmental monitoring and reporting requirements relevant for assessing progress with Key Performance Indicators (building on the indicators system introduced by the Better Regulation Guidelines)?
- Has the process of reporting taken advantage of technology: including advances in IT, increasing provision of data through Copernicus etc?
- Are environmental monitoring and reporting requirements met and with good quality, timely data?
- Does environmental monitoring and reporting provide sufficient information on the state and the effectiveness of implementation of the environmental acquis?
- Does environmental monitoring and reporting allow for the public to be properly informed about the state of the environment?
- Does environmental monitoring and reporting allow for evidence based decision making including evaluations of regulatory fitness and impact assessments?
- To what extent are the costs involved justified and proportionate?
- What factors influenced the efficiency with which environmental monitoring and reporting takes place?
- Are there examples of good practice in environmental monitoring and reporting at the national or regional level that imply it could be undertaken more efficiently, and if so how?
- Could improvements be made to the process for environmental monitoring and reporting to cut costs?
- Could the timing of reports be better synchronised or streamlined to cut costs?
- Could the promotion of active dissemination of data (in the context of Directives 2003/4/EC and 2007/2/EC) alleviate environmental monitoring and reporting burden whilst improving access for public authorities, businesses and citizens?
- Is some data reported multiple times, when it could be reported once and then used for multiple purposes?
- Is data reported (including to other parts of the Commission) but then full use not made of it?
- Is there coherence between reporting to the EU level and to other international levels?
- What is the additional value resulting from reporting to the EU intervention(s), compared to what could be achieved by Member States at national and/or regional levels?
- What would be the most likely consequences of stopping or repealing the existing EU reporting requirements and replacing them by increased transparency and active dissemination?
1
[1]See
[2]In particular, as set out in the priority objectives 4 and 5 of the 7thEAP which aim at improving the implementation, the knowledge and evidence base for Union environment policy.
[3]
[4]
[5]COM(2015) 610, in particular Annexes 2 and 5
[6]
[7]COM(2015)614 and COM(2015)595