What's the purpose, Mr. Juncker?

Just like many across the EU I've been waiting impatiently for a while for Jean-Claude Juncker, President-elect of the European Commission, to come up with the proposal for his team of commissioners. Just like many across the EU I was taken by surprise when he did...

Choosing Mr. Karmenu Vella from Malta, a country notorious for breaching the EU laws for nature conservation, to be in charge of environment is either very farsighted or exactly the opposite. However, we shouldn't judge Mr. Vella just by the country he comes from, and it's not so much the person Mr. Juncker chose that surprised me than the tasks that were given to him.

The first one on the list goes like this:

"Continuing to overhaul the existing environmental legislative framework to make it fit for purpose.
In the first part of the mandate, I would ask you to carry out an in-depth evaluation of the Birds
and Habitats directives and assess the potential for merging them into a more modern piece of
legislation."

I may be not so familiar with the entire "environmental legislative framework" but I do know the Birds and Habitats directives, mentioned specifically, rather well, and that is why the task left me wondering... Of course, formally it just says that "you might look into it", but at the same time it includes the presumption that something is wrong with the directives and needs to be changed. And what is wrong is obviously that they are not 'fit for purpose' and 'modern'.

Well, allowing shooting Indians if you see more than five of them on your property might illustrate an outdated law, but the Birds and Habitats directives are not about shooting Native Americans. What makes the directives not modern enough? Is it just the fact that there are two of them, not one? We have come a long way since we had only ten laws, and I don't think anyone would suggest that the mere number of laws indicates how modern we are.

The important thing is that the directives do deliver as they are and they would deliver even more if we would implement them fully. I'm from Latvia, I know. Since our joining the EU in 2004 little would have been achieved in nature conservation if it were not for the Birds and Habitats directives. But now we have a good network of protected areas for nature - Natura 2000, we have European Rollers we would probably not have without this network, and our government has evaluated the status of all wild bird populations of Latvia for the first time since... No, it's the first time ever!

It's not just Latvia. There is lots of evidence from all over the EU that the Birds and Habitats directives deliver what they were supposed to. White Stork, White-tailed Eagle, Eurasian Beaver - these are just some examples of populations recovering due to the legal protection by the directives. There is, of course, a lot still to be done, but the directives set us clear goals and give us the tools for reaching them.

With the directives obviously working for biodiversity and with the majority of the citizens of the EU finding the conservation of biodiversity important (see here), I just can't stop wondering what the purpose that the directives are unfit for is.