The first this year meeting of the National Focal Points for the cooperation with the European Environment Agency within European Information and Observation Network EIONET was held on 17-19 February 2015 in the EEA headquarters in Copenhagen. Preparatory work to the meeting as regards the country involvement, was coordinated by the Polish National Focal Point, the leader in the so-called NFP Troika. The EEA work programme for 2015 includes inter alia The European Environment - State and Outlook 2015 report (SOER 2015) communication activities.
NFP EIONET meetings are held three times a year to discuss by the EEA and NFPs tasks under EEA and EIONET work programme. Due to the heavy agenda some of the informative points were taken during the preceding webinar. The key points of the meeting in the EEA headquarters covered, among other things, EEA and cooperating within EIONET European Topic Centres work programme priorities for 2015, the timetable for the next work programmes preparation, the development of the knowledge base to support the implementation of the 7th Environmental Action Programme, the development of the EEA international cooperation including Shared Environmental Information System promotion outside Europe, final work on the national language versions of the elements of SOER 2015 package and on its communication and promotion.
NFP deliberations
As usual the plenary meeting was preceded by the meetings of NFP working groups, carrying, on its own initiative, additional tasks to improve the work within EIONET, and a pre-meeting, organized for the NFPs by the Troika, carrying additional tasks related to, inter alia, coordination of countries statements towards the EEA proposals. The pre-meeting was chaired by Małgorzata Bednarek from the Department of Monitoring and Environmental Information in the Chief Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, National Focal Point in Poland, who entered Troika in June 2014 and since October has been the Troika leader. The Troika term is one year and according to the rotation at each meeting, the leading role has been now taken by Ninni Borén, the Swedish NFP. Independently of the Troika, the NFP PL is also strongly involved in the work o the NFP working/user group on ICT tools development for the coordination of work within EIONET.
NFP Troika: Ahmed Azan – NFP UK, Małgorzata Bednarek – NFP PL, Ninni Borén – NFP SE
One of the key issues, during recent weeks the work of the EEA/EIONET National Focal Points, National Reference Centres on State of the Environment and on the Communication focused on, was the final stage of the work on the SOER 2015, including the preparation of the Synthesis in national languages. According to the Regulation on the EEA and EIONET, the EEA is obliged to prepare the report on the state and outlook of the environment in Europe every 5 years. The SOER report is prepared in cooperation with the countries and presents the state of environment assessment in the global, European and country perspectives. The SOER 2015 will be launched on the 3rd of March in Brussels. Related events will be held until the 6th of March and the communication activities will be held in the countries through the whole year. Selected launch events in Brussels will be streamed on-line and Polish belongs to the first group of languages the Synthesis has been translated into. Please follow the webpage of the EEA and CIEP!
