Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts

Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts was adopted on 6 July 2011. It covers three modules: air emissions accounts, environmental taxes and material flow accounts.

Article 10 of the Regulation contains a list of possible new modules to be introduced later based on Commission proposals. The first three of the new modules listed in Article 10 are covered by this draft amending Regulation: environmental protection expenditure, environmental goods and services sector and energy accounts.

Users put much emphasis on analysis and applications of environmental accounts in modelling and outlooks, both for preparing policy proposals and reporting on policy implementation and impacts. The new modules will allow expanding the integrated datasets available for such applications and analysis.

Article 4 of the Regulation foresees pilot studies to be carried out by Member States on a voluntary basis to test the feasibility of introducing new modules. Several such pilot studies have been completed clearly demonstrating the feasibility of the three new modules.

Environmental accounting uses existing data for compiling the accounts. No new data collection is necessary for implementing the new modules. Better use of information from existing data collection instruments will be made.

The United Nations Statistical Commission has adopted the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) as an international statistical standard at its 43rd session in February 2012. The new modules proposed are fully in line with the SEEA.

The proposed amending Regulation is in line with the revised European Strategy for Environmental Accounting (ESEA 2008). It will ensure that NSIs (National Statistical Institutes) can expand their work on environmental accounting, with the main objective of providing harmonised and timely data of good quality.

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)247: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:247:FIN

---