25th IMPEL General Assembly

The 25th IMPEL General Assembly (GA) took place in Stockholm on 8-9 June. The Network welcomed 10 new National Coordinators who are the focal points for the Network in each country as well as two members of the secretariat, for whom this was their first GA.

Paul Speight from DG Environment gave an overview of the key policy developments at the European level and the GA was updated on the activities of the Board, which included recent incentivising visits to Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

The Network was very pleased to approve a new member of IMPEL, from the Italian Commission for illegal landfills. This takes the membership to 58 organisations from 37 countries. They are the second new member this year after the State Environmental Inspectorate from Ukraine was agreed earlier this year in a written procedure.

The GA was updated on the activities of the five Expert Teams and 10 completed projects were approved. 6 new projects were also approved, that should be completed in the 2023-24 work programme. Further information on these projects will be published on the website soon. There was also a discussion on the activities of the Knowledge and Information Programme (KIP) and how this will support project teams in development of their outputs and deliverables, work on dedicated project pages on the website and help developing training programmes.

Updates were given on the three external projects that IMPEL is currently involved in, SWEAP, SRSS Malta and PROWhiBIT.  

The next GA will be an online event under the Spanish EU presidency on 28-30 November.