Where is prolonged austerity taking Europe? Can we hope for some light in the horizon, or is the deepening recession shifting attention away from the real causes of the crisis and sending governments onboard the tumbling boat of short-sighted development at any cost? Although there is no easy answer, the overall trend is clear: the environment and clean energy policies are being sidelined by the majority of debt-ridden member states. At the same...

The lease by the Government of Andalucia of ecologically important publicly owned natural lands (montes publicos) in the Donana National Park has heightened concerns about the conservation future of this unique and globally significant biodiversity hotspot. A large part of these lands is currently illegally occupied and cultivated, primarily for the production of strawberries....

The pressures exerted on debt-ridden governments to reduce the energy costs of industrial consumers and address the accumulating electricity market deficits are resulting in the weakening of renewable energies support policies across Europe. This however may prove not to be the case with Portugal....

The bosses of ten of Europe’s largest energy utilities joined forces against the support schemes for renewable energies. Nicknamed “The Magritte Group”, the CEOs of giants such as German RWE, Italian Enel and Eni, French GDF Suez, Swedish Vattenfall and Spanish Iberdrola, stated that support needs to be directed towards gas-powered capacity and not renewables. The group “warned” that the risk of black-outs has never been higher in Europ...

The EU’s “REFIT-Fit for Growth” initiative, which was announced by the European Commission on October 2nd, raises serious environmental concerns. The Commission’s Communication cites the environment as a problematic policy area that needs to be subjected to “fitness checks”, whose aim “is to identify excessive administrative burdens, overlaps, gaps, inconsistencies and/or obsolete measures which may have appeared over time, and to h...

A vision and roadmap for the development of a living and sustainable economy in Greece was presented by WWF Greece on 9 October 2013 in Athens. This proposal, which was reviewed by the Athens office of the Boston Consulting Group, opens a vital dialogue that never occurred in Greece, about development and the socioeconomic future of the country....

The Gift to the Earth, WWF’s prestigious award for conservation leadership, was presented to Denmark on October 21st, at the Global Green Growth Forum, in Copenhagen. The award was offered to Danish PM Ms Helle Thorning-Schmidt by Jim Leape, WWF International Director General....

Having dropped by a dramatic 2/3 since 2010, the austerity budget of Italy’s Environment Ministry can now hardly cover basic needs for nature conservation, control of environmental crime and protection against natural disasters....

1. IMPEL: “Working together to improve and innovate”. Conference on the implementation and enforcement of EU environmental legislation. Valetta, Malta, 1-4 October 2013....

MEPs call for stricter enforcement of EU environmental law | New Europe (24 October 2013) “MEPs have called on EU Member States to support the stricter enforcement of EU environmental law and endorsed the seventh EU environmental action programme. This programme that will run until 2020, will structure the EU's entire environmental policy, from water management to climate change....