EU Environmental Footprinting: Perspectives and Outlook Short report from the PEF Policy Conference, 28-29 April 2013, Berlin, containing insights from the European Commission and governmental footprinting initiatives. Including contributions from: Michele Galatola, DG Environment, European Commission Rana Pant, DG Joint Research Center (JRC), European Commission Sylvain Chevassus, Ministry of Sustainable Development, France Marie-Amélie Dupraz-Ardiot, Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), Switzerland Ines Oehme, German Federal Environment Agency (UBA)
Environmental Footprinting: Policy Context In April 2013 the European Commission (EC) issued the Communication “Building the Single Market for Green Products (SMGP)” and a Recommendation on the use of included methods. Part of the SMGP initiative was the development of Product Environmental Footprinting (PEF) and Organisational Environmental Footprinting (OEF), which shall form the methodological basis for comparing the environmental performance of products and organisations. Michele Galatola from EC/DG Environment and Rana Pant from EC/ DG JRC explained the initiative at the PEF Policy Conference. According to Mr Galatola the proliferation of various environmental assessment methodologies and environmental labels causes increased costs for companies and confuses consumers that want to purchase environmentally friendlier products. Therefore member states and companies operating on the internal market and outside the EU back up the initiative lead by the EC. At the recent Informal Council of EU Environment Ministers in Dublin none of the member states expressed negative opinion about the initiative. Michele Galatola reassured that no legislation will be issued that incurs unreasonable costs for SMEs or trade barriers for developing countries. Instead a 3 year pilot phase is planned starting in September 2013 (see below), to address those challenges and to develop further specifications for product categories and sectors. During this pilot phase Figure 1 Development process of EU Environmental Footprinting initiative; UCPD: Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Source: European Commission 2013.