ECA/06/17
Luxembourg, 13 July 2006
Information note by the European Court of Auditors on Special Report No 6/2006 concerning the environmental aspects of the Commission's development cooperation[1]
Protecting the environment is a vital part of promoting sustainable development. The Treaty requires that environmental protection be integrated into the definition and implementation of all Community policies and activities, including the Community's external aid. More generally, the environment has come to figure as a key item on the international development agenda, and environmental sustainability is one of the Millennium Development Goals.
The European Court of Auditors therefore undertook an audit in 2005 of the Commission's management of the environmental aspects of its development aid. The audit examined:
whether the Commission had a comprehensive strategy for addressing the environmental aspects of its development cooperation; whether it had made adequate management arrangements to implement the strategy; how far the environment had been integrated ("mainstreamed") into the Commission's development programmes and projects; and the results of the Commission's environment projects.
The environment is a particularly challenging area of development cooperation and partner countries often have higher policy priorities. The Commission established a strategy on the integration of the environment into cooperation with partner countries in 2001. However, the strategy does not clearly address the Commission's approach to financing programmes and projects in the environment and natural resources sector. There is therefore a need for the Commission to establish a comprehensive strategy for the environmental aspects of its development aid. The new development policy signed in December 2005, which makes the environment a priority field for funding, provides a good basis for establishing a comprehensive strategy.
While some progress has been made by the Commission in implementing its mainstreaming strategy, much work has still to be done. There is a need to further strengthen the reporting, monitoring and evaluation systems covering the environmental aspects of the Commission's development cooperation to enable its performance in this area to be better assessed. The Commission has not carried out an adequate review of the staffing implications of its mainstreaming strategy and has placed considerable reliance on outside expertise. Training for Commission staff on environmental issues did not begin until the end of 2004 and was often poorly attended while an environmental integration manual foreseen to be introduced in 2003 was still not operational at the end of 2005. The Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) drawn up by the Commission for the period 2001 to 2006 did not take sufficient account of environmental issues although the Commission has been addressing this problem in preparing the new generation of CSPs (2007-2013). Despite the increasing importance of budgetary support as a form of development aid, the Commission has done little to mainstream the environment into this area. There has not been a consistent system for the environmental screening of new projects. The Commission has not yet established a full inventory of environmental impact assessments performed on development projects and evidence was found that such assessments had not always been carried out.
Almost all of the environment projects examined were relevant to beneficiary country needs, and frequently also addressed global conservation needs. On the other hand, project outputs and results have frequently fallen short of objectives, partly because of the difficult conditions which development projects in general and environment projects in particular have to face. Furthermore, the project approach used has inherent difficulties in achieving significant impacts and assuring financial viability.
The Court's report provides detailed recommendations on establishing a comprehensive environmental strategy and following up its implementation as well as how to make both environmental mainstreaming and environment projects more effective.
Special Report No 6/2006: http://www.eca.europa.eu/audit_reports/special_reports/docs/2006/rs06_06en.pdf
[1] The sole purpose of this Information Note is to provide a summary. The Special Report, as adopted by the Court of Auditors, is available on the Court's website http://www.eca.europa.eu and will shortly be published in the C series of the Official Journal of the European Union.
