Press Release: Commission proposes to improve and streamline the European system for collecting, analysing and reporting environmental information.

Timely, reliable and relevant information on the state of environment is essential for sound policies. This includes information on how the climate is changing, whether European waters are improving and how nature is reacting to pollution and changing land use. Such information should be made available to all and be easily understood. To this end the Commission proposed to improve, modernise and streamline the present information systems by establishing a European Shared Environment Information System. The objective of this system is to coordinate all existing data gathering and information flows using modern tools such as the internet and satellite technology. The objective is also to move away from paper based reporting and reports to a system where data is made available to the users at source in an open and transparent way.