April 19, 2016

expert reaction to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on EU and UK Environmental Policy

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has published its third report on the EU and UK environmental policy in which they say that EU membership has a positive effect on the UK’s environmental policy.

Prof. Dame Anne Glover, Vice-Principal External Affairs & Dean for Europe at the University of Aberdeen and Former Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission, said:

“Environmental regulation through EU membership has been very positive for the UK. It has allowed us to influence EU regulation through our excellent research base, to accelerate our activity to protect our current and future environment whilst at the same time providing a level playing field for competition for our business.”

Dr Sarah Main, Director of the Campaign for Science & Engineering, said:

“Scientists are overwhelmingly in favour of the EU for the benefits it brings in research funding, collaboration, and access to large scale facilities. This report shows just how much we can benefit when science is used to develop policies to protect and enhance our environment across the EU. It’s great to see science so highly valued by policy-makers both here in the UK and across the EU.”

Note: ‘overwhelmingly in favour’ based on polls by CaSE, Nature and the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

CaSE – 93% of researchers who responded to our poll believed EU membership is a benefit to UK science and engineering (fig 4, p4 CaSE report, 403 respondents)
Nature magazine – a poll of nearly 2,000 researchers found 83.4 per cent of researchers working in the UK who were polled regardless of their intention to vote in the EU referendum said they wanted Britain to remain in the EU with 11.9 per cent in favour of a “Brexit” (also reported in Research Fortnight, 31 March).
IChemE – Over 1,000 IChemE members in the UK responded to the survey, which reveals that 75% will vote to ‘remain’ in the EU when the vote takes place on Thursday 23 June.
http://www.icheme.org/media_centre/news/2016/uk-chemical-engineers-are-in-for-europe.aspx#sthash.Nc8kicAx.HxvnqxBq.dpbs

Declared interests

None declared