The European Environment Agency (EEA) – environmental information and monitoring

KEY POINTS

The EEA is an EU decentralised agency. Its objective is to provide objective, reliable and comparable information to enable environmental protection and improvement and support sustainable development so that:

• measures are taken to protect the environment;
• the results of those measures are assessed;
• the public is kept informed about the state of the environment;
• EU Member States and EU institutions have the necessary technical and scientific support for implementing EU environmental policies.

It has the following principal tasks:

• to collect, process and analyse data to provide the EU with the objective information necessary for effective environmental policies;
• to assist in the monitoring and implementation of environmental measures;
• to collate, assess and disseminate data on the state of the environment to the general public;
• to ensure that data are comparable throughout Europe;
• to promote the incorporation of EU data into international monitoring programmes such as those of the United Nations;
• to stimulate the development of methods of assessing the cost of damage to the environment and the costs of preventive, protection and restoration policies;
• to develop assessment methodologies relating to chemicals in the fields falling within its mandate;
• to stimulate the exchange of information on the best technologies available for preventing or reducing damage to the environment;
• to publish a report on the state of, trends in and prospects for the environment every five years.

The data covered include:

• air pollution, noise pollution and industrial emissions;
• water and the marine environment;
• the state of the soil, biodiversity and ecosystems;
• nature protection and restoration;
• land use and natural resources;
• the circular economy, resource efficiency and waste;
• chemicals;
• Europe’s seas and coasts;
• greenhouse gas emissions, climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The EEA Management Board includes one representative from each of its 32 member countries (the 27 Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Türkiye), two from the European Commission and two scientific experts appointed by the European Parliament. An executive director is responsible for day-to-day management.

The EEA cooperates with other EU and international bodies, including the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Eurostat, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA),along with the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In particular, in the field of chemicals, cooperation with ECHA, the EFSA and the EMA covers the exchange of data and information on chemicals, including possible related data formats and controlled vocabularies, and the development of scientific methodologies for the assessment of chemicals.

Eionet, coordinated by the EEA, is the EU’s information network on environmental issues and consists of the EEA’s 32 member countries and seven cooperating countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia).

Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 (see summary), the European Climate Law, added a further article (Article 10a) to Regulation (EC) No 401/2009 establishing a European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. The tasks of the advisory board include providing scientific advice and issuing reports on the latest scientific developments on climate change and coherence with existing and proposed EU measures, and the EU’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement. The advisory board comprises 15 independent senior scientific experts covering a broad range of relevant disciplines. The members of the advisory board are designated for four years by the EEA’s Management Board, following an open and rigorous selection procedure. The members are appointed in a personal capacity and selected on the basis of their scientific excellence, broad expertise and professional experience.