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Implementation Challenges 2021 Report is now available

04 Oct, 2022

The purpose of the Implementation Challenge is to identify challenges in the implementation of EU Environmental Law as well as barriers to its enforcement. Implementation Challenge 2021 Report follows on from a survey that was open to those who implement environmental law in Europe.

This survey focused on the practical challenges associated with the application and implementation of environmental law by practitioners across Europe. The results highlighted a number of issues relating to the challenges to implementation, as well as barriers to compliance, across a range of areas such as waste, water, pollution, Climate Change, staffing difficulties and capacity building, training and knowledge exchange.   

The results can help IMPEL in a number of ways:

  • By providing evidence that there are persistent issues that need to be tackled. The clearest examples and something that IMPEL can’t directly control relates to staffing difficulties (lack of staff, lack of training, increasing workloads) but it’s also clear there are persistent issues where progress is slow within some areas of work, such as waste, tackling environmental crime and dealing with complex legislation where IMPEL could have an impact.
  • In almost all areas, respondents said more training/guidance would be helpful. Responses indicated that working collaboratively on projects and facilitating expert exchanges would work well for this.  
  • This is the first survey that Climate Change has featured in, and it yielded some really useful information, including the different ways that organisations are starting to build climate change as a topic into their work for example participating in the creation of national climate plans aiming to reduce carbon footprints. Taking a proactive approach and being clear in the responsibilities of authorities in relation to climate change will be key in meeting future targets. 

The full report is available

Implementation Challenge 2021 Report


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