Environmental issues during the Swedish Presidency in autumn 2009
The Swedish Government has the ambition of being a driving force in EU environment policy. Environmental issues will take a lot of space during the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers in autumn 2009. As President of the EU, Sweden will represent the EU at the UN conference of parties (COP15) in Copenhagen that is to adopt a new global climate convention after the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Intensive work is under way in the Government on the details of preparing and formulating the priorities during the Swedish Presidency. The first part of this work consists of drafting a joint work programme extending from 1 July 2008 to 31 December 2009 along with the two preceding Presidency countries, France and the Czech Republic. The Swedish Government has stressed that climate, environment and energy should be among the questions with highest priority in this general 18-month programme. The Ministry of the Environment is organising meetings with its counterpart ministries in France and the Czech Republic, between both ministers and officials, to discuss the joint work in the area of the environment.
In order to form a picture of the questions that can be expected to come up in the EU in the autumn of 2009 and the environmental problems that Sweden should raise as President of the EU Council of Ministers, the Ministry of the Environment has instructed the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to conduct an inventory. The report published by the Agency in 2006 has now been followed up in an update that was presented in December 2007. Read the summary in English via the link on the right.
