A new report, published last week by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for the Environment, estimates that the cost to the EU of not implementing EU environmental laws in 2018 was around EUR 55 billion (USD 71.72 billion).
This is the result of EU Member States not fully achieving the targets set out by EU environmental legislation across seven policy areas: air, nature and biodiversity, water, waste, chemicals, industrial emissions, and major accident hazards, and horizontal instruments.
The report states that not implementing EU environmental law results in negative outcomes across all aspects of society, ranging from reduced biodiversity and increased illness from air and noise pollution to unrealized market opportunities. The size of the implementation gaps was calculated using the difference between estimates of the 2018 environmental status in each policy area and the respective environmental targets.
The aim of the report was to provide an up-to-date estimate of the costs and foregone benefits from not fully achieving the environmental targets specified in the EU legislation. A benefit of providing an estimate for 2018 is that this year is covered by the second round of the Environmental Implementation Review (EIR) reports (also published last week), a tool launched by the European Commission to improve implementation of EU environmental law and policy. Hence, the new study was able to both benefit from and feed into the EIR process.
The study was led by global consultancy COWI in partnership with environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting. COWI led the study on five of the seven areas, with Eunomia contributing their expertise on waste and industrial emissions.
“It is crucial to understand the effects failing to meet environmental targets has on the EU economy,” Tanzir Chowdhury, Eunomia’s lead author, said. “This report clearly shows how important it is to ensure that the Member States are complying with environmental legislation: meeting the targets will result in stronger economies, better public health, and, of course, a diverse natural environment for our children to enjoy well into the future.”
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