Law and Practice of EU External Relations

The Union's positive and negative green footprints

It is fair to say that the European Union (EU) has left both positive and negative footprints on Europe's environment and, necessarily by extension, on the entire world's environment.

The adjectives used by the scientific community in relation to the degradation of the environment underline the urgency on a global scale and not only at EU level: population or demographic ‘explosion’ threatening mass migration and pressure on borders; ‘catastrophic’ events such as the summer floods in central Europe and the severe droughts in the Iberian Peninsula; ‘dramatic’ increase in global temperatures (from 0.7° Celsius over the last one hundred years to between 1.4° and 5.8° Celsius over the next hundred years); ‘disastrous’ effects of the deforestation in southern Europe; the ‘devastation’ wrought by hurricane Katrina. And in its report of 2 February 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) gives its best estimate of increases in global warming of between 1.8° Celsius and 4° Celsius and a rise of between 18cm and 58cm in sea levels, both by 2100. Sea levels can be expected to rise a further 20cm if the recent melting of polar ice sheets continues. Global warming is now beyond any doubt the result of human action.