EU Enlargement & Neighbourhood Policy
Enlargement of the EU, engaging an increasing number of countries to take part in the EU's environmental agenda, is a unique opportunity to promote environmental sustainability on a local, national, regional as well as global level. Importantly, the EU's enlargement in 2004 incorporated ten new Member States to participate in EU policy making and implementation, including environmental protection and nature conservation. Another opportunity is to involve countries already at the accession and candidate stages and to create good relations with other neighbouring countries to facilitate the coordination and collaboration of environmental work across borders. Periods of transition are also particularly important to prepare accession and candidate countries for the successful implementation of EU policy measures.
IEEP is working with new Member States, accession countries and neighbouring countries to improve the conditions for implementing and influencing environmental policy. Working with national institutions, as well as non-governmental organisations, IEEP is able to inform and advance environmental policy in the enlarged EU and its neighbouring countries. In particular, IEEP undertakes the following work:
- supporting institutions on policy implementation, including capacity
assessment, compliance and enforcement, studies identifying the costs and
benefits of EU enlargement, and exchange of good practice;
- working with NGOs to support their engagement in EU and national policy discussions; and
- supporting network and relationship building between institutions and other stakeholders.
This work is undertaken in new Member States, accession and candidate countries, including the Baltic States, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey and neighbouring countries such as the EECCA region and Israel.
For interviews, comment and articles, please contact our policy specialists Andrew Farmer, Patrick ten Brink, Samuela Bassi