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that the aggregated cost of damages caused by
European industrial facilities for the period
2008–2012 totalled at least
€
329 billion. One
half of these costs are directly attributable to the
pollution generated by a minuscule 1 % of the
facilities that reported releases to air during this
period and 90 % of the costs to a mere 14 %,
the majority of which were coal- and lignite-
fuelled electrical power plants. Lastly, the in-
creasing number of chemical substances pre-
sent in consumer products is being linked to
higher incidences of endocrine illnesses and
disorders.
EU environmental policy 2015
It is within this context of environment issues in
need of immediate attention that the Juncker
Commission got underway. Several weeks be-
fore the close of 2014, the Commission under-
took an action unparalleled in the history of the
EU: it announced the withdrawal of a pending
legislative proposal on two packages of meas-
ures to which the prior Commission had not
only devoted much energy but had also consid-
ered its flagship initiatives regarding environ-
mental issues –its Circular Economy and Clean
Air Packages. The incoming team argued that
the EU must focus its efforts on “what truly
matters to for citizens –jobs, growth and invest-
ment”, a position that revived a false dichotomy
between growth and environmental protection
and misguided ideas that environmental stew-
ardship was a luxury that Europe could ill afford
in times of crisis, environmental policies put a
financial strain on the system and supposed an
undue burden for the private sector and, as a
threat to growth, should therefore be avoided.
Juncker’s declaration annulled, in a single stroke,
the work of decades and a longstanding
consensus that environmental protection meas-
ures, efforts to fight climate change, and the
responsible and efficient use of natural resourc-
es were positive in terms of competitiveness,
growth and job creation.
The new Commission decided to focus its
environmental policy on a new strategic energy
union designed to reduce the EU’s dependence
on Russian imports, a posture that provoked
criticism from environmentalist NGOs and a
number of MEPs. Juncker’s new team withdrew
more than 80 measures proposed by their pre-
decessors, including an 80 % recycling target
for packaging materials by 2030, a ban on land-
filling all recyclable and biodegradable waste by
2025 and the “aspirational” goal of reducing
waste by 30 % by 2025. The previous commis-
sion had also proposed that Member States
limit their emissions of a number of key air pol-
lutants: sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, car-
bon dioxide, particulate matter and tropospher-
ic ozone precursors –the last of which is a
particular problem in Spain according to the
European Environmental Agency. The commis-
sion had previously estimated that air quality
measures alone would prevent as many as
58,000 premature deaths in Europe per year
and avoid between
€
40 and
€
140 billon in re-
duced damage costs related to air quality issues.
The cost of these measures was estimated to be
€
4 billion (European Commission, 2013).
The withdrawal of these measures had been
requested by an umbrella organisation for
European business federations called
BusinessEurope, which had argued they were
too ambitious and that their implementation
would undermine European competitiveness. In
the wake of pressure brought to bear by a num-
ber of Member States, several business sectors
and environmental organisations, a European
Circular Economy package (albeit less ambitious