By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Jul 21 2005 (IPS)

Environmental groups have cautiously welcomed a decision by the European Commission Wednesday to press ahead with a range of environmental policies despite concerns about high costs to industry.

Members of the European Commission met Wednesday (Jul. 20) to discuss seven main environmental policies to be launched by the European Commission, the European Union (EU) executive, in the second half of this year.

The Commission has been divided over how to balance green commitments with making the European economy more competitive. Environmental groups had feared the debate could kill a series of strategies on issues such as air pollution and recycling for being too expensive.

Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso had called for a general debate among commissioners taking the whole environment package into question, after concerns about its impact on Europe’s growth and jobs.

The battle to boost the sluggish economy of the 25-nation EU while remaining true to social and ecological policy goals has been a key theme of Barroso’s Commission, which took office last November.

Barroso has made accelerating economic growth his main goal, while also pledging support for the concept of sustainable development, which values protection of natural resources.

But as a result of Wednesday’s debate, the Commission will now be able to pursue plans to present seven thematic strategies between September and December, focussed on air quality, marine environment, waste prevention and recycling, sustainable resource use, soil protection, pesticides and on the urban environment.

Speaking after the meeting, Barroso’s spokeswoman Francoise Le Bail said the 25 commissioners supported the strategies.

“The Commission has decided to forge ahead and it does indeed intend to adopt these strategies. The environment will remain a central policy subject for the Commission,” she told media representatives.

Le Bail said the Commission did not see a contradiction between respecting the environment and boosting the economy, adding that environment commissioner Stavros Dimas will start presenting the environmental strategies after the executive’s summer break.

Barroso called for a full debate on environmental policy after he saw the details of plans to tackle air pollution.

The plans include new environmental regulations to prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths. But industry says the costs to business would run into billions of euros a year.

European business group UNICE has questioned whether the projected costs of the air pollution strategy alone would be worth the expected benefits.

The Commission predicts the initiative will cost 12 billion euros (14.49 billion dollars) a year from 2020, though Dimas says the benefits, including illness prevention, would be worth four times as much.

But high unemployment and stagnant economies in some member states have fuelled calls by some leaders to cut down on costs to big employers.

Environmental groups had been warning that green polices could suffer as a result, and so cautiously welcomed Wednesday’s decision to push on with implementing the environmental policies.

“In the last few weeks, we got increasingly concerned that this Commission would alienate the European citizens further from the EU institutions by dumping the environmental agenda. In the end, also thanks to the interventions of civil society organisations and a range of governments, wisdom has prevailed, for now at least,” John Hontelez, secretary general of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Europe’s largest network of environmental organisations, said Wednesday.

But Hontelez expressed serious concerns about the expected content of several of the policies.

“We know the ambition level is not high in many cases, and the current pressure to not come with any proposal that business considers to be bad for competitiveness is not helping,” he added.

Environmental groups WWF, Greenpeace, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Seas at Risk said they were particularly concerned about the “cautious approach” taken on strategies, and said they feared the marine strategy, which governs the EU’s seas, would be watered down to pacify industry.

“By imposing a further delay on the European Marine Strategy, the Commission is burying its head in the sand. High environmental standards are not an optional add-on; they are a fundamental precondition for a healthy and sustainable economy,” Saskia Richartz of Greenpeace Europe said Wednesday.

“Without an EU marine policy based on environmental considerations, there is no point talking about future growth potential or more and better jobs, whether these depend on safe and clean seas, non-toxic fish or litter-free coastlines,” she added.

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