On 24 April, the ENVE commission, after appointing Mrs Maria Luisa Coppola as new chairwoman, discussed in depth the 7th Environmental Action Programme opinion, particularly with regard to the priority objective related to sustainable cities.
Members expressed different views as to possible measures that could be put in place to encourage cities improving urban planning with due respect to principles of sustainable development, as well as how to raise awareness about EU funding and the Green Capital Award.
The number of amendments submitted to the text has proven the interest of the members in this topic who adopted the text by majority whilst underlining that there was still room for improving it ahead of the next plenary session.
During the meeting the ENVE commission adopted by an overwhelming majority the opinion on multilevel governance in promoting biodiversity strategy . The CoR intends with the opinion to provide its input for the midterm review of the EU strategy which set six targets aiming to increase efforts to fully implement existing nature legislation and integrating biodiversity into sectorial policy.
The ENVE commission also set out its priorities to address to the new Parliament and Commission. In this respect the EA group coordinator Cllr Linda Gillham called for more emphasis on mitigation of climate change and for more support to cope with extreme weather events such as flooding.
