POLITICO Pro Sustainability Snapshot

Good afternoon readers. Eline and Paola here with your daily digest of news. Reach out anytime to eschaart@politico.eu | ptamma@politico.eu | View in your browser

Thanks to Emmet Livingstone, Kait Bolongaro and Eddy Wax

DISPATCH FROM GREEN WEEK: The EU's Green Week moved from Warsaw to Brussels today, where Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella celebrated the Commission's record in introducing new laws to protect the environment, such as the single-use plastics directive, and making Europe a global leader on the circular economy. "People like [the laws], people want them," he said, but complained that implementation by member countries still lags. "Making laws is not enough, you can't stop climate change with ideas or stop biodiversity loss with good intentions," he said, adding: "Most of our legislation is quite mature, but wherever we look we find implication gaps."

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EU OMBUDSMAN STINGS COMMISSION OVER BEE DOC: Emily O’Reilly, the EU’s ombudsman, on Tuesday concluded the European Commission was guilty of maladministration for failing to disclose what national governments think of the controversial Bee Guidance Document.

Background: The European Food Safety Authority drafted the document in 2013 with a strict methodology for assessing pesticides’ impact on bees. It contributed to a full ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides last year. As with all matters pesticide, however, the methodology is controversial and governments have been blocking its full implementation in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed. Activists argue that pesticide makers and governments are worried about more product bans.

O’Reilly said the Commission can't block the release of EU country positions on the document, saying citizens’ right to know what their governments are up to trumps Brussels’ argument that it needed to protect an ongoing process. Read more by Emmet here.

AND SPEAKING OF BEES … The European Commission is expected to register a citizens’ initiative to save bees, according to officials familiar with the matter, our colleague Florian Eder reports in this morning’s Brussels Playbook. The organizers urge the Commission to “adopt legislation to maintain and improve habitats for insects as indicators of an undamaged environment” and to establish mandatory targets “to make the promotion of biodiversity an overall objective of the common agricultural policy.” They’ve now got one year to collect 1 million signatures from at least seven EU countries.

CAP CLIMATE REPORT DELAYED UNTIL JULY: A report on the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions won’t be published until July, Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan told national ministers Tuesday. The report was commissioned by DG AGRI and finalized last November, and was previously promised to be published this spring. WWF said it filed a freedom of information request for the report on May 3.

“It’s always our intention to publish the study together with a staff working document, a very useful complement to the evaluation study … The staff working document has taken a bit longer to complete than had been anticipated, but will be ready in July,” Hogan said.

In a statement, WWF said: “EU agriculture ministers appeared to begin to recognise the urgency of climate action.” Jabier Ruiz Mirazo, head of agriculture policy at WWF, said: “Unfortunately, a crucial piece of evidence for this reform — an assessment of CAP’s impact on the climate — has still not been published by the European Commission, even though it was submitted last year.”

CIVIL SOCIETY CALLS FOR GREENER CAP: The EU needs to overhaul its farming policy if it wants to help the environment, according to a report published Tuesday by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Friends of the Earth Europe and BirdLife Europe. According to the trio’s Agriculture Atlas 2019, 30 percent of CAP funding goes to less than 2 percent of beneficiaries. They also said CAP reform plans don’t do enough to ensure the agriculture sector meets environmental targets such as the Paris Agreement.

“Agriculture policy is currently held captive by the intensive farming lobby. Farmers will be the first hit by the looming environmental collapse,” said Harriet Bradley, agriculture policy officer for Birdlife Europe, in a statement. “With the European Elections in a few weeks, citizens have a golden opportunity to vote for protecting nature, and by extension a more viable future for the farming sector in the long-term.”

PLASTICS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: Plastic pollution threatens efforts to keep global warming to below the 1.5-degree goal set in the Paris Climate Agreement. According to a report published today by the Center for International Environmental Law, the production and incineration of plastics will produce more than 850 million tons of greenhouse gases this year.

Most plastics are produced from fossil fuels, which means greenhouse gases are emitted at each stage of their lifecycle, including production, transport and waste management. By 2050 plastics will be responsible for up to 13 percent of the world's total carbon budget — the amount that can be emitted while staying below 1.5 degrees.

QUICK HITS

The Norwegian government said it will allocate more money to climate and environmental issues as part of a revised budget announced Tuesday.

The U.K.'s Environmental Audit Committee launched a consumer survey to ascertain the level of public awareness and concern about the presence of harmful chemicals in everyday consumer products.

Industry lobbies are mounting a push to roll back EU clean water regulations, according to a study published today by several environmental groups.

A report published this month by the nonprofit research group Earthsight connects a Brazilian beef firm with a history of corruption and illegal deforestation charges to tinned beef in U.K. supermarkets. Quartz has more.

Here’s a recap of today’s news, along with Pro articles and alerts from overnight.

EU ombudsman blasts secret pesticide positions

Stricter methodology informed the EU's decision to permanently ban three neonicotinoid pesticides last year.

By Emmet Livingstone | 5/14/19, 3:41 PM CEST

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