The EU’s Assembly of local and regional authorities have voted on a set of measures to progress on environmental law implementation in Europe.

According to the Committee of the Regions (CoR), there is an “unsatisfactory level of implementation of environmental law in Europe with a lack of coherence and consistency in reporting and compliance assurance requirements”.

The new measures aim to ensure monitoring and reporting are effectively applied to guarantee environmental legislation.

They include automatising and digitalising reporting tools as well as producing guidance documents and implementation scorecards.

Local and regional authorities are responsible for implementing 70% of European environmental legislation.

Andres Jaadla (EE/ALDE), CoR rapporteur and member of Estonia’s Rakvere City Council said: “We first need to undertake a comprehensive inventory of environmental monitoring and reporting obligations and an assessment of administrative costs endured by cities and regions.

“We call on the European Commission to closely associate the European Committee of the Regions with future programmes that aim at improving environmental implementation and governance.”