Dismantling of environmental governance systems in Italy, Spain and Greece, oil and gas drilling plans in ecologically sensitive areas of the Mediterranean, weakening of important EU environmental policies. On the other end of the equation, collective initiatives bring together millions of citizens in demand for socially just and environmentally sustainable policies. This is the environmental state of play in crisis hit Europe....

Achieving the support of almost 1,500,000 EU citizens, campaign platform “Water is a human right” (right2water.eu) achieved a remarkable feat: Commissioner Michel Barmier for Internal Markets and Services announced that the EC will exclude water services from its Concessions Directive. “I fully understand why citizens are both angry and upset when they are told their water services might be privatised against their will. I would feel the s...

The abolition by law of the Hellenic Mapping and Cadastral Organisation (OKXE), the Environment Ministry’s national chartographic agency, and the concession of its geodata portfolio to private entity Hellenic Cadastre S.A. is a serious blow to the right for free access to environmental and spatial information. The law was voted in Parliament on June 20th....

As the hydrocarbon frenzy dominates the energy policy agendas of crisis stricken Mediterranean states, Italy aims to increase its oil output to 200,000 barrels a day, thus becoming the third producer in the EU, following Britain and Norway. A plan with an inestimable toll on nature: the marine and coastal environment along the straits of Sicily is a highly biodiverse region that deserves additional conservation status, according to NGOs, such as...

In a June 19th vote at the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, a set of amendments gained majority support and reconfirmed the Commission’s mandate for a one-off intervention to correct the massive imbalances rocking the Emissions Trading System. The Commission’s proposal for backloading the auctioning of 900 million CO2 allowances, in order to temporarily stall the continued oversupply, was rejected in a 16 April vote, but the Com...

Spain’s sustainability observatory closes due to lack of funding The short lived but prestigious Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad en España (SEA) announced its closure, due to the non-renewal of its funding agreement with the Environment Ministry. Its website, containing reports and important information on Spain’s state of the environment and sustainability policies was also shut down....

A group of 18 environmental groups calls for a halt in the constant process of indiscriminate cuts to the budget of the Ministry of Environment, which has been reduced from € 1.6 billion in 2009 to just 468 million euro in 2013. At this point, the Environment Ministry is the poorest in resources, in the Government.  WWF Italy has been criticising the progressive dismantling of the Environment Ministry since 2010, on the grounds that it has re...

European Commission: Meeting of EU Finance Ministers in Luxembourg (21 June 2013). European Commission: Council steps up excessive deficit procedure for Belgium (21 June 2013)....

Time has come for new indicators besides GDP | The Nation (24 June 2013) “"There's no one indicator that can indicate everything. We should have other indicators aside from GDP," Professor Anantha Duraiappah, executive director of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, said at Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum 2013's session on "Beyond GDP". To him, GDP is not a measure of well-being of society, as pu...