From year to year, the European Union is becoming an actor that is extremely concerned about protecting the environment and mitigating the conditions that favor the emergence of the much-feared climate change. With the launch of the Green Deal in 2020, the European conglomerate is making consistent efforts to achieve carbon neutrality, involving the main areas of common policies in these actions: transport, energy and the environment. In an effort to achieve a sustainable economy, in which economic growth will no longer be coupled with the use of resources, and renewable energy sources will be used regularly, the European institutions are taking small but sure programmatic steps to manage these issues.
Thus, on Wednesday, May 12, 2021, the European Commission adopted the EU Action Plan "Towards a zero pollution for air, water and soil", considered to be an essential result of the implementation of the Green Deal since last autumn.
This plan sets out an integrated vision for development by 2050, keeping in line with the ambitious Green Deal, with an intermediate deadline in 2030. The major objective of the plan to reduce air, water and soil pollution to zero aims to protect ecosystems by using digitization tools, precisely to combat pollution. In order to put this objective into practice, it is necessary to revise some relevant legislative acts, but also an interconnection of the fields of action and the tangential policies.
The particular objectives of the plan focus on improving the quality of life, but also on ecosystems that contribute to quality of life by improving air quality, numerically reducing waste that pollutes water, protecting the soil by significantly reducing (by 50%) the use of pesticide, and also the reduction of the quantities of waste produced in urban areas.
To achieve these goals, Member States must act in a coordinated manner by aligning living and quality standards with those of major international organizations in the field, such as the World Health Organization, better waste management policy, careful water quality control as well as a much better organized coordination with the environmental authorities of the Member States, which can actively contribute to the Community effort. A special issue is the extension of the mandate of this plan to the external pollution of the European Union. The aim is to restrict the export of potentially toxic products and waste to third countries.
A very interesting solution with a high potential for attractiveness is the launch of live laboratories in which to explore and test environmentally friendly digital solutions, designed to reduce pollution to zero.
There is a real tour de force of the European Community to act on all levels to combat the pollution of the main supporting elements of life-friendly ecosystems - air, water and soil. Like the European Green Deal, this action plan adopted on 12 May 2021 is an ambitious one, with the Commission relying on the mobilizing nature of the short deadline - 2030 and 2050 respectively. However, even if it is almost impossible to implement it until these dates due to procedural and technological limitations, the EU Action Plan "Towards a zero pollution for air, water and soil" is a significant step forward on the road to environmental protection, which will certainly lead to other significant changes in the field in the near future.
