The European Commission unveiled its working programme for 2009 in November, with ambitious goals set in a year which also sees the end of the Commission’s mandate and elections in the European Parliament. The programme seeks, as one of its top priorities, to come up with a Communication on the Lisbon Strategy post-2010, as well as tackling the ongoing financial crisis.

Tackling climate change and making Europe sustainable is also one of the main priorities however, with 2009 being labelled ‘a critical year for efforts to tackle climate change’ according to the communication.

Various areas have been outlined to this end, with highest importance perhaps given to the development of a Communication on the EU position in preparation for the UN climate change COP-15 Copenhagen conference. This will reiterate the EU’s objective of limiting temperature increase to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and present the different methods it proposes for achieving this aim.

The Commission sees coming up with a Green Paper on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy as a priority initiative. In addition to this it sees putting forward  Communications on financing low-carbon technologies and on the future of road transport as further priorities, which are key to environmental sustainability. A Second Communication on ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) for energy efficiency was also suggested.

The programme also wishes to review the proposal of a legal instrument to underpin development of the Shared Environmental Information System. This would involve simplifying the proposal so that data in the environmental sphere is made more accessible and is more broadly shared.