Modernization of Environmental Reporting as a Tool to Improve the European Commission's Regulatory Monitoring Capacity

Abstract

Recent reforms in the reporting and monitoring process, in particular enabled by advances in digital technology, have made three main contributions to the European Commission's capacity to monitor member states' compliance with EU environmental law. First, quicker access to data has been achieved by increased levels of publicly available electronic data, data processing by the European Environmental Agency, and data harvesting at EU level. Second, comparability of data has been improved by a change to indicator reporting from textual-based reporting. Finally, improved data from the EU's Earth observation programme, Copernicus, allows better real-time access to data and double-check the information provided by the member states. These findings suggest that the digital transformation opens new opportunities for strengthening the Commission's role as enforcer of EU law. However, the improvements in the Commission's monitoring capacity are recent, and quicker access to better data is only one among a number of factors influencing its monitoring capacity.