Ecologic organises an international workshop on the "Economic Analysis according to the EU Water Framework Directive: Present status of Implementation" that will take place on 20 - 21 November 2003 on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear safety (BMU). The workshop is intended to further the international exchange of experience and addresses Member States and first Round Accession Countries.

The Evangelische Akademie Loccum hosted a conference on "GATS, EU-internal market and the liberalisation of general services in Germany". Wenke Hansen talked about the quality and price of water services in Europa.

The workshop focussed on the aspects that are to be covered in the report 2005 to the European Commission. Approximately 150 German actors of water resource management discussed results, problems and new approaches and the actual state of affairs with regards to the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive.

As part of implementing the Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC-Directive), the Best Available Techniques (BAT) for waste treatment industries were identified in a European-wide process and described in the BAT REFerence document (BREF) "waste treatment industries".

The workshop aims at continuing and intensifying the process of an international exchange of experiences with the on-going activities which was started by a workshop in September 2001 in Bruges. It will focus on the exchange of information regarding experiences in the field of air pollution abatement measures - both their planning (drawing up action plans according to art. 7 (3) and preparation of plans or programmes according to art. 8 (3) of the Framework Directive) and their implementation. The workshop will serve as a forum for exchanging experiences on the national implementation of the EU air quality directives with emphasis on air pollution abatement measures.

The "EU Common Forum on Contaminated Land" was initiated in 1994 and provides a discussion forum for experts from all EU Member States and Accession Countries. Main topics are the develoment of strategies for the treatment of contaminated sites and for land recycling. Key aspects of the 9th meeting of the Forum in November 2002 at Berlin are the Groundwater Directive, Environmental Liability, Soil Policy, Sustainable Landuse, the 6th RTD Framework Program and two EU research projects (EUGRIS, METROPOLIS).

On 23rd October 2001 the European Commission presented the proposal for a directive establishing a scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community. The proposal plans a collective European approach to trading with emission allowances, which should come into effect by 2005. The objective of this workshop, that took place one year after the publication of the proposal, was to gain an overall view of the discussion process and to draw up a first summary.