Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Referring to you letter of 19 October 2000, I can hereby comment on the outline of the Royal Commission's study on long-term effects of chemicals in the environment, as requested.

Indeed, as your background information demonstrates, it is an important and timely task which has to be very well coordinated with existing and expanding EU legislation and activities, as well as with international efforts in progress in this field.

The topic is very broad and covers a wide range of complex issues including human health effects and effects to the environment.

I would just like to draw your attention to the fact that the European Union has been supporting environmental research and development since early 1970's. Since 1984 these research activities have been implemented within so-called Framework Programmes for research and technological development. One of the topics covered since the beginning of the Framework Programmes has been the assessment of risks associated with chemicals. This has included both risks to human health and to the environment (e.g. water and soil contamination, air pollution, marine ecosystems etc.). It is worth to note that research in this area is intended to provide support for Community Policy and Regulatory activities on chemicals. This has been the basis for priority setting in the research topics covered.

In order to provide you with more detailed information about our approach I include one brochure of our past Programme "Environment and Climate". This brochure gives you an idea how research priorities in this field were already addressed in our Fourth Framework Programme (1994-1998).

The other brochure is about the current ongoing Fifth Framework Programme describing the focus of the Thematic Programme on "Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development". The approach is a problem solving one integrating the previous results to a broader one, including the socio-economic impact. In this context I wish to highlight among the ongoing projects, our research effort to understand the eco-toxicological effect of chemical mixtures of pollutants (i.e. the project called BEAM, see at the site http://www.dbs.cordis.lu. This project is a good example of an integrated multidisciplinary projects which is building on the project results obtained in our past programme.

In case you are interested in obtaining more detailed information about the individual projects supported and their results, you can directly contact Mr. C. Patermann, Director of the Environmental and Sustainable Development Programme (including the socio-economic impact).

Wishing you good receipt of our brochures and hope you will find our feedback helpful.

Brochures enclosed:
Environmental Change Impacts and Environmental Technologies
Environment, Energy, Europe

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