15/04/2005 - Receiving
the award: From left, Bernd Mehlhorn from
the Commission and Andreas Barkmann from the
EEA
Last night the European Commission and the
European Environment Agency (EEA) won an award
for best new electronic information source
for the publication of the European Pollutant
Emission Register (EPER). EPER is the first
Europe-wide register of industrial emissions
into air and water and was launched in February
2004. It makes detailed information on pollution
from around 10,000 large industrial facilities
in the EU and Norway publicly accessible on
the internet for the first time. The European
Information Association awarded EPER first
place in its Electronic Sources Category,
recognising it as the best of a large number
of electronic publications,databases and websites
produced at European level in 2004.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said:
"EPER enables European citizens to exercise
their 'right to know', allowing them, for
example, to see how much pollution large industries
in their neighbourhoods generate and to compare
this with the situation in other parts of
Europe. We are proud that our efforts to collect
and disseminate this information have been
rewarded by the European Information Association."
Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director
of the EEA, added: "EPER is a milestone
in the provision of information to the European
public about their immediate environment.
The European Environment Agency plans to build
on this by creating an extensive internet
portal to regional and selected local environmental
information covering the complete area of
the Agency’s 31 member countries by 2008."
What is EPER?
EPER 2004, the European Pollutant Emission
Register, is the first Europe-wide register
of emissions into air and water from large
and medium-sized industrial installations,
including pig and poultry factory farms. It
covers 50 different pollutantsand comprises
data from the 15 ‘older’ EU Member States
as well as Norway and Hungary, which participate
on a voluntary basis. The EPER website is
hosted by the EEA in Copenhagen. In close
cooperation with the Commission, the EEA has
managed the process of collecting the data
for EPER from the countries and has been involved
in the design and development of the website.
Since its launch the EPER website, http://www.eper.cec.eu.int/
has registered 230,000 visits.
What is the European Information Association?
The European Information Association (EIA)
is an international body of information specialists
whose aim is to develop, co-ordinate and improve
access to EU information. Registered as a
charity in Britain, the Association seeks
to help improve the quality of EU information
through lobbying and the annual EIA Awards.
More information is available at http://www.eia.org.uk.
Next steps
The Commission plans to translate the EPER
website into every official language of the
EU. French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
and Greek will be included in May 2005. Others
will be added when emissions for 2006 are
reported by all 25 Member States.
The EU also intends to ratify the UN-ECE Protocol
on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers
(PRTRs) under the Aarhus Convention. As a
result, EPER will be upgraded to a fully comprehensive
European PRTR that gives the public more information,
for example on what industries do with waste.
The Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation
on the establishment of the European PRTR
on 7 October 2004.
About the EEA
The European Environment Agency is the leading
public body in Europe dedicated to providing
sound, independent information on the environment
to policy-makers and the public. Operational
in Copenhagen since 1994, the EEA is the hub
of the European environment information and
observation network (Eionet), a network of
around 300 bodies across Europe through which
it collects and disseminates environment-related
data and information. An EU body, the Agency
is open to all nations that share its objectives.
It currently has 31 member countries: the
25 EU Member States, three EU candidate countries
- Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey - and Iceland,
Liechtenstein and Norway.A membership agreement
has been initialled with Switzerland. The
West Balkan states - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
and Serbia and Montenegro - have applied for
membership of the Agency.
