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The mills of the nature conservation administration grind slowly, its database not at all – missing data on protected biotopes hamper the work of the EU

It is now almost three years since the Mouvement Ecologique and natur&ëmwelt jointly lodged a complaint against the Luxembourg government with the EU Commission.

 

As a reminder: using the example of the dramatic decline in “lean lowland meadows” and the grey partridge , the environmental organisations showed how the government is in breach of European Community law. The government has accepted considerable losses of protected meadows and birds without penalising these violations to the necessary extent and without taking effective countermeasures.

After two years, in October 2023, the EU Commission contacted the Mouvement Ecologique. They needed more concrete examples of destroyed or degraded lowland meadows. As the official monitoring of the open land biotope register has this documentation as its task, it was obvious for the Mouvement Ecologique to request this data from the Ministry of the Environment in February 2024. This is data that should be made available to everyone under the right to information.

 

Unfortunately, this has still not happened to date. The reason given – months after the enquiry was made – was that the results of the monitoring had not yet all been transferred to a database. According to the Mouvement Ecologique , however, this should have been done four (!) years ago  when responsibility for the biotope register was transferred from the Ministry of the Environment to the Nature Agency.

 

It is shocking and incomprehensible that this data seems to be given such low priority. Yet nature conservation policy is largely based on them! This data provides information on the condition of the protected biotopes, how many have improved as a result of measures, how many have been destroyed despite their protected status … and therefore also forms the basis for any prosecution of illegalities and, if necessary, corrections to the handling of the programmes.

 

How can the correct implementation of the Nature Conservation Act be guaranteed if the data is not available in a summarised form? How is it also possible to compare developments over the years if access to the data appears to be virtually impossible? Furthermore, the question arises as to how Luxembourg is supposed to fulfil its regular reporting obligations to the EU without this functioning database …

 

The so-called reporting – i.e. an evaluation of nature conservation policy – is due soon, and this data forms an indispensable basis. How many hours of taxpayers’ money does it take to compile the overview by hand ? The Mouvement Ecologique nevertheless replied to the EU in September, pointing out that in the absence of information from the ministry , no overview of the facts could be provided. But of course, the grievances identified were once again explained. Further content of the letter included the general lack of co-operation between the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture to tackle nature conservation in the open countryside. It is well known meagre lowland meadows suffer the most from intensive agriculture – especially dairy farming. However, they are also representative of many other habitats in our cultural landscape that should be preserved due to their biodiversity.

 

You can find the entire letter to the EU on our homepage here.

 

21.10.24

 

Translated by deepl.