EPER, launched by the European Commission and the European Environment Agency in early 2004, has had more than 240,000 visits to its website in the first year alone. Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, said “In today’s Europe the public play an increasingly important role in environmental decision-making at a personal, local and national level. The EEA is working for access to environmental information for everyone so that they are better able to fulfil this important role. EPER is a stepping-stone in the right direction.”
EPER is a register of the emissions produced by large and medium-sized industrial facilities. It covers 50 air and water pollutants. The data in the register comes from facilities in all EU Member States. EPER is publicly accessible on the internet. Anyone can search the register according to various criteria, such as the name of a specific industrial facility, its post code, address or location, by sector of activity, by name of pollutant, or using a combination of any of these.
The EPER website allows European citizens to make their own analysis of pollution activities in a specific country or in the EU as a whole. EPER also provides background information on the pollutants mentioned in the report and their impact on human health and the environment.
The 2004 data on emissions in Europe were recently added to the register for all 25 Member States of the Union. Until now the register included only the 2001 data for the 15 Member States before the 2004 enlargement of the EU (EU-15), except for Norway and Hungary which reported data voluntarily.
A report reviewing the emissions register will be published in the spring of 2007. Following this review EPER will be replaced by the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (European PRTR). The PRTR's first edition is expected to be published in the autumn of 2009. This register will be more comprehensive than EPER since it will cover more than 91 substances emitted from industrial installations in 65 different sectors of activity, and from other sources such as road traffic, domestic heating and agriculture. It will also include transfers of waste and waste water from industrial facilities to other locations. The European PRTR has been developed to comply with the UNECE Protocol on PRTRs. The European Community adopted the Protocol on PRTRs in February 2006.
To access the EPER web site, see www.eper.ec.europa.eu/
For the complete EU press release on the EPER report, see http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/1618&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
