EEB’s assessment of the German EU presidency’s environmental performance

Prepared by the EEB in cooperation with Seas at Risk, this report evaluates the environmental performance of the German presidency of the European Union (July-December 2020). It is based on the EEB’s Ten Green Tests, which were communicated to the German presidency when it took over the helm of the EU.

The assessment concludes that the German presidency was performed well on moving the European Green Deal forward despite the coronavirus crisis, with important agreements on the EU budget, the COVID-19 recovery fund, biodiversity, and digitalisation. However, the presidency was weak on climate action, disappointed on access to environmental justice and performed very poorly on agriculture.

[Update 5/2/21: An older version of this document incorrectly depicted the outcome on Test 9 ‘Promote democratic accountability and rule of law through better access to justice’ on p.11 as ‘poor’ when this was intended to be ‘mixed’. This has now been corrected.”]