Policy Report: How far is Macedonia in fulfilling the requirements under Chapter 27 - Environment of the acquis 20 pages, pdf  Download Back

Policy Report: How far is Macedonia in Fulfilling the Requirements Under Chapter 27 - Environment of the Acquis

Publisher: Analytica, Macedonia

Date: December 2012

Volume: 20 pages, pdf

Description

Macedonia’s progress under Chapter 27 of the EU Acquis–Environment and climate change has beenone of the slowest since the EC started reporting about the reform processes in the potential candidates and candidates’ member states. The issues in the environmental sector have not been high on the Macedonian government’s agenda due to many other problems taking time and money such as public administration and judicial reforms, police reform, human rights, non-majority communities’ rights etc., which usually take priority over the environment. Although as a candidate for membership Macedonia is obliged to work on reforms in every chapter including this one. Some progress has been made in certain areas such as transposing the acquis into national legislation, in particular on waste management or chemicals. However there is much left to be done, and the general observation is that, the most painful and expensive reforms are yet to be implemented.

Overview of the EC Progress Reports regarding Chapter 27

Several components of the overall environmental sector have been or are of main importance to
the European Commission (EC) when preparing the Progress Report such as:
- Horizontal legislation
- Air quality
- Waste management
- Water quality
- Nature protection
- Industrial pollution control and risk management
- Chemicals
- GMO (up until 2010 this field after the last reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy is transferred in Chapter 12
- Food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy. (New area in this Chapter is Climate Change)
- Noise (added in 2006)
- Forestry (up until 2010– after that year it is added to the part regarding nature protection)
- Civil protection (added in 2011)
- Climate change (added to this Chapter in 2010)
- Administrative capacity

Legislative framework in the Republic of Macedonia

Although progress has been rather slow in the environmental sector, Macedonia has adopted several laws throughout the years that regulate different areas such as the environment, its protection, waste management, air quality, water flows, noise pollution etc. The country has also adopted several strategies and action plans concerning some major topics such as waste management, sustainable
development, environmental investments etc. As it can be seen from the above analysis of the progress reports, the implementation of laws goes alarmingly slow and there will be needed significant amounts of funds as well as highly trained administration to get to a level close enough to what the EU requires.

Conclusion

As it is well known, in 2005 the European Commission started publishing the so-called Progress Reports intended to present the path of reforms in each country which was a candidate or a potential candidate member state. These reports combine the reforms completed or not completed in each of the acquis’ chapters summarizing what has been done the previous year. After seven years of reporting, one gets quite a clear picture of the trends going on in each country, what are the main issues that resist the time, who are the best reformers, etc. From what was stated in this paper, in Macedonia the situation with the environmental sector, the protection and fight against clim ate change can be described as dire. Most of the reforms still wait to be implemented, the administrative capacities have not been improved,
and money is lacking for implementation of almost all obligations, regulations, laws, bylaws etc.