Russia and Ukraine - Milieukontakt International

Projects Environmental
Policy Making and
EU Enlargement
28 • Annual Report 1998 •
The main aim of the project ‘Environmental
Policy Making and NGO Involvement in
Central and Eastern Europe’ (EPM) was to
encourage CEE NGOs to participate in
environmental policy making. Involving
NGOs in the policy-making process is a very
labour-intensive task, with often invisible
and difficult to measure results. Nevertheless,
this project definitely made a
contribution by encouraging CEE NGOs to
become involved in environmental policy
making. CEE NGOs have become incorporated
in international NGO networks that
participate in shaping Pan-European environmental
policies, for example, and the
concept of lobbying as a useful tool has
taken root among many CEE NGOs as well
(see section on Lobbying Facilities). Apart
from that, CEE NGOs are becoming involved
in projects dealing with the enlargement
of the European Union. NGOs in different
accession countries have developed
their own points of view towards accession
to the EU, and these NGOs are already
respected for the useful contribution they
can make by the different CEE environmental
ministries. This is definitely a
success.
Access to Europe
Five International Steering Committee
meetings were held in 1998 to discuss the
proceedings of the EU enlargement project.
Milieukontakt is one of the nine members
that make up the project. The activities to
be carried out in Estonia, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia,
including training sessions on EU accession,
were discussed, as well as the financial
status of the project. The training sessions
in the different CEE countries proved to be
a big success, with an average of 70 participants
per country during two or three
day sessions. In addition, opinion polls
were held. At the end of the year, a 190-
page book EU accession and the Environment:
an introduction was published and
translated into the languages of the accession
countries. Apart from this, most of the
NGOs involved have established links with
their respective accession negotiating
teams. Milieukontakt made funds available
for six CEE NGO representatives to visit a
six-day conference in Brussels in December,
which focused on informing already experienced
NGO representatives of the latest
policy developments of the EU towards the
accession countries.
▲ Jeroen Kuiper
‘Policy Matters’ and case reports
Milieukontakt wrote a case report entitled
Joining the European Union, which was distributed
among hundreds of environmental
NGOs in CEE and NIS. Apart from case
reports, the newsletter Policy Matters was
published. Most of the articles were written
by CEE NGO representatives. The articles
covered, among other things, transport and
lobbying themes, EU accession and the
proceedings of the Environment for Europe
process.
European enlargement debate
In 1998 Milieukontakt celebrated its tenth
anniversary. Milieukontakt organized a
public debate in June 1998 in The Hague
on the topic of EU enlargement and its
consequences for the environment. Speakers
included Mrs. De Boer, the former Dutch
minister of the environment; Mr. Van der
Pas, chief of the EU accession negotiations
delegation; Mr. Eisma, Member of the
European Parliament; Mr. Hontelez, secre-
photo: milieukontakt