VIDEO
European Environment Agency — Who we are
Contextual framework – the EEA in context
Organizational framework
Membership
In the beginning, membership of the EEA, as a Community agency, was the preserve of the members of the EC. Community enlargement to the 15-member EU and the continuing process of enlargement to incorporate eastern European countries, coupled with a pragmatic realization that environmental factors affecting the EU are not confined to its geo-political borders, has seen the membership of the EEA increase substantially.In essence, the EEA is the first EU body to constitute and organize itself in a post-enlargement mode.
The current membership of 31 countries comprises:
(a) The 15 EU Member States;
(b) The accession countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, the Slovak Republic, and Turkey;
(c) From the European Economic Area: Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.
Membership negotiations are underway for further expansion. The EEA is continually developing links with the environmental monitoring bodies of other countries. Consequently the membership of the EEA will continue to grow even after the conclusion of the current phase of enlargement.
Though the membership of the EEA has increased, the breadth of the monitoring and reporting undertaken by the EEA has extended even further, so that relevant environmental data can be obtained and collated from the widest possible range of sources. Links exist under the Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States Initiative of the EU (TACIS), with several former soviet republics that spread the EEA’s access to environmental indicators through, inter alia, Georgia, Belarus, and Russia, as far eastward as Mongolia. The EEA also extends its work and information sources by working through the EU PHARE initiative, which is designed to facilitate and accelerate the preparation for future accession of central and eastern European countries that are not part of the EEA or TACIS. The monitoring and reporting remit of the EEA can now be described as pan-European to cover from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean Sea.
Governance
The influence and control of these members is exercised through the EEA Management Board (the Board). Each of the members has one seat on the Board, the European Commission holds two seats, and the European Parliament nominates two members with a scientific background in environmental protection. Accordingly there are 35 voting representatives on the Board, each of whom may be replaced by an alternate representative. Also in attendance at Board meetings are the Executive Director of the EEA and the Chairperson of the EEA Scientific Committee. A two-thirds majority of the representatives of the Board is required for all decisions.
The representatives nominated generally come from within the central government department responsible for the environment or the governmental agency tasked with environmental monitoring, protection and enforcement. The current Irish representative is the Assistant Secretary General responsible for the Environment Division at the Department of the Environment and the alternate representative is the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Board is aided in its work by the EEA Scientific Committee (the Committee). This Committee is mandated by the founding Regulation and comprises experts in environmental issues nominated for a four-year term, which may be renewed once. The work of the Committee consists of providing scientific advice to the Board so that the Board may carry out its functions fully informed of the implications of scientific requirements and limitations. In particular, ongoing work of the Committee includes scientific assessment of the EEA’s long-term ecological and environmental health monitoring. The Board has increased the number of members of the Committee in response to the overall growth in membership of the EEA. At present there are 14 members, all of whom are members of the academic community, who teach and research in fields relevant to environmental protection. The Board has set the maximum of the Committee membership at 20.
Financial Resources
The EEA requires a substantial budget to maintain its extensive activities. The expenditure of the EEA for 2003 was narrowly over €30.5M. This figure would need to be increased significantly for the EEA to fulfill the entirety of its mandate. However, the 2003 budget is over 50% greater than that of 2000 in recognition of the increasingly important role that the EEA performs in the scheme of attaining the environmental objectives of the EU.
The budget of the EEA is resourced from two main sources: allocation of funds from the EU, and membership subventions from countries outside of the EU. The EU contributed over €21M to the EEA budget in 2003, while membership subventions generated almost €6M. The remainder of its budget is made up of miscellaneous income generated by the provision of EEA products and services, a subvention from the European Free Trade Association, and allocations under EU programmes for co-operation with Balkan countries. The budget of the EEA is primarily spent on staffing and administration costs, which account for almost 60% of total expenditure. Further sources of expenditure are the maintenance of the European Topic Centres, including monitoring, reporting, assessment, and the operation of the EIONET information dissemination system.
Management
The Board formulates the agendas and strategies of the EEA in response to the needs and requirements of the members and the European Commission and develops annual and multi-annual work programmes. The day-to-day administration of these programmes and execution of the EEA functions and activities is controlled and managed by an Executive Director appointed by the Board. Domingo Jiménez Beltrán, who was the first Executive Director, oversaw the progress of the EEA from its initial establishment in Copenhagen in 1993 to its contemporary 31-member prominence. Professor Jacqueline McGlade, a renowned environmental scientist, who takes up the post for a five-year term, succeeded him in June 2003.
The Executive Director manages a streamlined organizational structure designed to be efficient and responsive. The input of the Board and the Committee is processed thorough the Executive Director and applied through five internal programme divisions. The five divisions of the EEA are:
(a) Administration;
(b) Strategic development and international co-operation; (c) environmental assessment;
(d) Reporting and networking co-ordination;
(e) Information technology and services.
Project teams comprising members of all divisions carry out the fundamental work of the EEA, to process, monitor and report on environmental indicators. In this way, the EEA achieves a level of efficiency which allows it to undertake a disproportionately larger workload.
