State of the environment : second report 1979

While the general public attaches tremendous importance to the improvement of environmental quality, the information available to it in this field is often of a highly technical nature, forcing discussion to be left to experts. One of the aims behind the publication of Reports on the State of the Environment' is to make environmental problems understandable to the non-expert, and thus generate greater public understanding of Community policy in this area, as desired by the European Parliament. The first Report summarized the whole range of activity at Community level, as expressed in proposals made to and decisions made by the Council. The second Report does not attempt to be comprehensive. For example, it does not touch on questions raised by the production of nuclear energy, on which the Commission held a series of public hearings in December 1977 and January 1978, reports on which will be the subject of a separate publication. This report merely selects a number of individual topics, felt to be of particular interest, and presents them in a non-technical manner. It does not necessarily give the complete statement of Community policy in the fields covered, but is intended rather to illustrate various aspects of environmental policy and their progressive development.