Ban on illegal timber within EU

The European Parliament approved in early July of this year to close EU markets to illegal timbers. The EU has been interested in this issue since 2003, but the approach then centred on voluntary partnership agreements between the EU and timber producing countries. however, these voluntary agreements proved not very succesful and this year the EU has issued legislation against illigally harvested timber that covers from logging to products delivered to the final consumer within the EU. More information on this is available here.

EU legistaltion on waste is difficult to enforce

The European Parliament's environment committee has called on the European Commission to distribute lists of member states that fail to properly implement EU legislation on waste, water and nature protection, arguing that the situation had become "absurd". According to MEP Dagmar Roth-Behrendt (Germany, S&D) on Tuesday (23 February) member states have not implemented the legislation that they accpoved and sigend up to. this related in particular to the implementation of the EU environmental rulebook. For more information, follow this link.