On the 19th of June 2019 the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the EEA and EIONET took place in Copenhagen. The events, as well as the EEA Management Board meeting and EEA/EIONET National Focal Points meeting organized during the same week, were attended by the CIEP representatives, according to their roles in the EEA and EIONET structures.
The celebration was opened by the interactive seminar for both the Management Board and National Focal Points. It was dedicated to preparing the future EEA Strategy. The participants reflected inter alia on the objectives and needs to guarantee successes in the work within the next 25 years.
The evening commemoration event included inter alia the ceremonial session with speeches, given inter alia by the European Commission representatives, first EEA Executive Director - Domingo Jiménez Beltrán - and the current one - Hans Bruyninckx, the artistic part and the official dinner for over 350 guests. From the Polish side the events were attended by Paweł Ciećko – Chief Inspector of Environmental Protection and a Polish member of the EEA Management Board, Anna Katarzyna Wiech – Head of the Department of Environmental Monitoring in the CIEP and an Alternate of the Polish member in the EEA MB, Małgorzata Bednarek – an employee in the same department and the EEA/EIONET National Focal Point in Poland.
The celebration events were preceded by the meeting of the EEA/EIONET National Focal Points on the 17-18 June. This second meeting during the year 2019 was focused on current work progress, programming documents, changes in the EEA portal, upcoming state and outlook of the European environment report SOER 2020 and additional thematic areas concerning environmental reporting and Copernicus programme. A key part of the meeting was also the break-out groups discussion on the challenges and the way forward for the EEA and EIONET. On the 20th of June the 85th meeting of the EEA Management Board was held, concerning current management and organisational issues, including the decision on the form of work on the future EEA Strategy.
The European Environment Agency was created by the Council Regulation (EEC) No 1210/90 on the establishment of the European Environment Agency and the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET), that entered into force on the 30th of November 1993 and was later amended. The EEA started operating in 1994 with the headquarter in Copenhagen. The EEA aims to support sustainable development and help to achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe’s environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policymaking agents and the public. The EEA Management Board includes representatives of all the EEA countries. The EIONET is an unique, partnership network of cooperation, that consists of the EEA and a few European Topic Centres as well as National Focal Points and National Reference Centres in 39 countries – in total several hundred institutions and over 1500 experts.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary the EEA published a fold-out brochure European Environment Agency 1994 – 2019, presenting the history of 25 years of providing the information on the state of Europe’s environment.
