Urgent letter to Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella
The environment ministers of nine EU member states have cautioned the EU commission against weakening EU nature directives. In their urgent letter to EU Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella of 26 Ocotober, they stress that the two directives on birds and Natura 2000 "have proven their worth" and have become "an essential component of biodiversity in Europe". The nine signatories of the letter include German Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks and her French colleague Ségolène Royal as well as the environment ministers of Italy, Spain, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Luxembourg. The environment ministers intervened because of the "Fitness Check" (REFIT) of EU nature directives, currently being carried out by the EU commission with a view to potential cuts to bureaucracy.
They continue: "It will not be possible to achieve the goals of the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020 without them." Instead of considering amending the directives the focus needs to be on strengthening them and improving their implementation. The legal certainty achieved for all involved thanks to the directives should not be jeopardised.
Earlier more than 500.000 EU citizens had favoured maintaining the directives in their present form in the course of a public consultation organised by the EU Commission.
Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks explained: "We want our letter to be an important contribution to the conclusions Environment Commissioner Vella will draw from the ongoing REFIT process and I hope that the voice of so many member states will be listened to as well as the voices of EU citizens."
EU Commissioner Vella will present the results of the Fitness Checks at a conference on 20 November 2015 before presenting his conclusions of these results in 2016. The EU birds and habitats directives have facilitated the setting up the largest network of protected areas – Natura 2000 – during the last 30 years. It covers more than 15 percent of the surface area in Germany and comprises more than 26.000 protected areas in the whole of Europe.