EU adopts rules to better measure the environment’s contribution to the economy

05 November 2024

The new rules extend the scope of the European environmental economic accounts, introducing forest accounts, ecosystem accounts, and environmental subsidies accounts. The amended regulation aims to provide better information for the European Green Deal...

Today, the Council formally adopted the amended regulation on European environmental economic accounts, the EU’s common statistical system which brings together economic and environmental information.

The new rules extend the scope of the European environmental economic accounts, introducing forest accounts, ecosystem accounts, and environmental subsidies accounts.

The amended regulation aims to provide better information for the European Green Deal, in order to support monitoring and evaluation of the EU’s progress in meeting its environmental objectives.

New account modules 

The current regulation on European environmental economic accounts sets out a common framework for collecting, compiling, transmitting and evaluating European environmental economic accounts. The regulation contains six modules, including air emissions accounts and environmentally related taxes.

Relevant and detailed data from member states is key to keeping the EU on track to meet the European Green Deal objectives. Therefore, the new regulation introduces three new environmental account modules for more comprehensive monitoring:

Member states will start reporting these data to the Commission (Eurostat) in 2025 and 2026.

Statistical data portal 

The amended regulation introduces a new statistical data portal (statistical dashboard) for environmental economic accounts, which will summarise the key indicators and data from those accounts in an understandable and accessible way for all users. It will also contain data on climate change mitigation investments by member states.

The data portal will be operated by the Commission (Eurostat) from December 2024 and will be updated once a year. It will be publicly available on the Eurostat website.

 

Council


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