EEA Statement on the OECD Environmental Outlook report

The European Environment Agency warmly congratulates the OECD on its Environmental Outlook report, launched today in Paris.

The OECD Environmental Outlook builds on the EEA's own 1999 report Environment in the European Union at the turn of the century, which projected future trends in the EU to 2010. The OECD report confirms many of these trends while extending the projection for OECD countries to 2020.

Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán, Executive Director of the EEA and a member of the OECD Advisory Panel for the Environmental Outlook, said: "The EEA has provided considerable input to the OECD report and this collaboration has resulted in a welcome consistency of approaches and results. This consistency should prove very helpful to EU policy makers in formulating the action needed to address the many environmental threats identified in the report.

"The OECD's first outlook report is also significant for showing the extent to which the importance of environmental protection is increasingly penetrating the consciousness of individual economic sectors.

"In particular, it highlights the seriousness of the threat posed by climate change while at the same time bearing out the EEA's analysis that the cost of meeting the Kyoto Protocol targets can be very low. According to the OECD's report, the cost would be just 0.1% of gross domestic product if coupled with an international trading regime.

"We must hope that this message will help to change the US administration's view that the Kyoto Protocol is too costly to implement."

Notes to Editors

The European Environment Agency aims to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe's environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy making agents and the public. Established by the European Union (EU) in 1990 by Council Regulation 1210/90 (subsequently amended by Council Regulation 933/1999), the Agency is the hub of the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET), a network of some 600 environmental bodies and institutes across Europe.

Located in Copenhagen and operational since 1994, the EEA is open to all countries that share its objectives and are able to participate in its activities. It currently has 18 member countries - the 15 EU member states, plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which are members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The 13 countries in central and eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area that are seeking accession to the EU are expected to join the EEA in the coming months, making the Agency the first EU body to welcome these countries.