LEGAMBIENTE NAZIONALE – APS – RETE ASSOCIATIVA – ETS
Legambiente
Legambiente, nata nel 1980, è oggi l'associazione ambientalista italiana più diffusa sul territorio: oltre 1000 gruppi locali, 20 comitati regionali, più di 115.000 tra soci e sostenitori.
ID: 51844192809-38
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Jessika Roswall (Commissioner) and
20 Mar 2025 · Commissioner’s portfolio areas
Meeting with Annalisa Corrado (Member of the European Parliament)
17 Jul 2024 · Green Deal e transizione giusta
Response to Commission Directive amending Annex III of the Nitrates Directive
17 May 2024
Legambiente agrees with the aim of reducing the use of synthetic mineral fertilisers, replacing them with equivalent products obtained from waste biological matrices (RENURE), with a view to the circular economy and reduction of output. BUT it cannot agree with the method, which aims to significantly raise the application limits of reactive nitrogen established for areas vulnerable to nitrate pollution, as this is a very substantial modification of the nitrate directive: we believe it unacceptable that a practice susceptible to impair the water resource and the environment is proposed as a form of incentive. A relaxation of the Nitrate Directive rules carries significant risks of worsening the effectiveness of the WFD, and of frustrating the pursuit of one of the most crucial targets of the From Farm to Fork strategy. We find it very regrettable that such a legislative proposal, which radically modifies the Nitrates Directive, is being developed in the complete absence of an impact assessment The wider use of RENURE, and the development of technological solutions aimed at reducing the costs of obtaining them from waste materials, must be pursued through a rigorous logic of substitution of equivalent raw materials (mineral fertilisers), and not, in the most absolute measure, granting an additional use that would otherwise not be permitted as well as being harmful to the protection of water resources: the straight road for the use of all nutrients, alternative or traditional, must be that of reduction, through an increase in efficiency and the adoption of agroecological practices, keeping also in account the need to reduce the farmland livestock density.
Read full responseMeeting with Daniela Rondinelli (Member of the European Parliament)
22 Feb 2024 · Various
Meeting with Beatrice Covassi (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and European Environmental Bureau and
15 Nov 2023 · Public Hearing - Soil Monitoring Law
Meeting with Martin Hojsík (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and European Environmental Bureau and
15 Nov 2023 · Soil Health Law
Response to Soil Health Law – protecting, sustainably managing and restoring EU soils
30 Oct 2023
Legambiente is one of the most representative Italian organizations for environmental protection. By decades it has been involved in the issues of land degradation and in promoting awareness on soil health. In 2008, together with the National Institute of Urban Planning (INU) and the Polytechnic of Milan, it founded the Research Center on Land Take. In 2017 Legambiente launched the ECI (European Citizens' Initiative) and the European Campaign 'People4Soil'. In recent years, starting from 2020, also in connection with the European Environment Bureau (EEB) and in networking with numerous organisations, it has promoted information and positioning actions on the topic of soil health and the need for a European framework for soil protection We welcome the European Commission's proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law (SML): to date, soil has not benefited from European legal protections like other environmental sectors, such as air and water, and also due to the lack of guidelines from of the EU, even at the level of most Member States, soil protection is not ensured. A European soil law is a precondition for the success of the targets of the European Green Deal, as healthy soil is key to achieving climate neutrality objectives, halting and reversing biodiversity loss, consolidating long-term food and water security and reducing pollution. Furthermore, especially in the most densely populated European areas, soil has become the object of strong competition for uses, in which land consumption through urban transformation wins, but the growth of urbanized areas comes into conflict with adaptation policies, for the effects of the sealing of wide soil surfaces, the interruption of ecological continuity at a territorial scale, the growth in demand for individual mobility: pursuing an efficient land use, preventing sprawl, is a relevant issue for the quality of the development of cities, which requires subsidiary responsibility by cities and regions, in a coherent framework within which the EU must also develop its leadership in agreement with the member states. The current proposal has some notable shortcomings. As it stands, the proposal will not achieve healthy soils in the EU by 2050. This lack of ambition is witnessed by the change in the name of the law, which was originally intended to be called the Soil Health Law. The proposal needs to be significantly improved to bring effective change. We recommend considering the following points: - Goals and ambition: Increased ambition requires setting legally binding targets, as well as further targets with clear deadlines. - Governance: The SML should include mandatory plans to provide Member States with a path to achieve the objective of the Directive. - Soil health monitoring: The SML should include soil biodiversity descriptors and ensure that they are included in the soil health assessment - Accountability: The SML should make polluters pay by establishing mechanisms that hold large players whose activities degrade land accountable. - Land management: The SML should ensure mandatory minimum sustainable land management practices. The article on land take should be considerably strengthened by reaffirming the objective of "zero net land take" by 2050, together with a roadmap to achieve it through intermediate steps - Soil pollution: Regarding contaminated sites, the SML should ensure harmonization between Member States by setting, together with a generalized risk assessment approach for soil remediation, mandatory EU-wide thresholds for concentrations in soil of the main soil pollutants. We discussed our assessment with EEB, please find enclosed our shared positioning paper
Read full responseMeeting with Patrizia Toia (Member of the European Parliament)
16 Jan 2023 · Methane Emissions
Response to Soil Health Law – protecting, sustainably managing and restoring EU soils
16 Mar 2022
Legambiente is an environmental association active at national level in Italy through more than 700 local sections and a wide network of relationships with organizations in other European countries. It is a member of EEB. Legambiente is also involved in European projects in information and sustainable management of soil: the Life Soil4life project, of which Legambiente is the lead partner, is currently underway. For over 15 years it has been actively engaged in combating land take caused by infrastructure development and urban expansion, as well as all other forms of land degradation related to contamination and intensive agricultural use. We have long promoted the adoption of legislative initiatives on soil, both at regional and national level. Unfortunately, we find that at the national level, legislative proposals fail to complete their institutional process, while the regions adopt laws, only referred to the topic of land take /soil sealing, that are poorly effective and not coordinated with each other. The issue of soil degradation is also totally unexplored in terms of legislation, in fact in our country the soil does not benefit from legislative protection, and this means that legal action takes place in a framework insufficiently protected by rules, leading the judiciary to replace the legislative power when citizens and civil society turn to it.
From a comparison with legislation in other European countries, we have found that there are unacceptable differences, leading to forms of dumping, for example with regard to the threshold levels of contamination: in this area, Italian legislation is much stricter than that of neighboring countries, and this means that companies are discouraged from undertaking the reuse of brownfield sites, being able to carry out the same type of interventions in neighboring countries, such as Austria or France, where soil requirements are less stringent, or choosing to develop on greenfield. Soil protection is also inadequate in the agricultural sphere: it is true that rules of good practice are foreseen in the cross-compliance regulations, but their effectiveness is limited to farms adhering to payment schemes and, furthermore, in many cases the obligations are temporarily limited to the CAP programming cycles, and therefore the results are unsatisfactory. These are some of reason why Legambiente in the past has promoted the European citizens' initiative 'People4soil' in favor of a European directive, an initiative that did not reach the required target but has nevertheless collected the support of about 250,000 signatories.
European-wide framework legislation, including targets to be pursued to improve soil health and protection measures for soils of natural or semi-natural habitats, due to their importance as soil carbon and biodiversity stocks, is urgently required. We believe that some of the proposals contained in the Soil Thematic Strategy, such as the soil health index, can be game changers, provided that their implementation is bound by legally binding rules. On the contents of our proposals, please refer to the position paper that we helped to develop with a community of organizations from several member countries.
Read full responseResponse to EU Forest Strategy
4 Dec 2020
Legambiente sostiene fortemente la scelta di rinnovare la strategia forestale europea, alla luce del New Green Deal e della strategia per la biodiversità al 2030, con cui deve necessariamente essere coerente.
La strategia UE per le foreste deve tener conto della multifunzionalità delle stesse a partire dalla necessità di un utilizzo delle risorse forestali per sostituire i materiali a forte impatto climatico senza dimenticare il ruolo che le foreste svolgono verso i cambiamenti climatici clima e accrescere il patrimonio naturale e la biodiversità.
Pertanto sarà fondamentale insistere sulla Gestione Forestale Sostenibile e Responsabile (GFSR) definendo il raggiungimento di una % minima di foreste certificate e soggetta a piani di gestione definiti, applicati, periodicamente aggiornati e legalmente vincolanti. La nuova strategia deve in questo senso affiancare l’obiettivo di migliorare la gestione e ripristinare le foreste esistenti con criteri basati sulle soluzioni naturali (SNB) con l’obiettivo di aumentare la copertura forestale in Europa, di ridurre le importazioni da paesi extra-UE e ridurre la deforestazione a livello globale.
La GFSR deve avere come primo obiettivo la capacità delle foreste di fornire servizi ecosistemici quali lo stoccaggio del carbonio, la fornitura di acqua potabile e di cibo, la tutela dei suoli, di cui è sempre più necessaria la contabilizzazione, nell’ottica della loro valorizzazione. Prioritaria deve essere la prevenzione di rischi legati a condizioni climatiche avverse, disturbi ed incendi, che continuano ad essere la più grave minaccia per le foreste e risultato dell’impatto del clima.
La strategia dovrà comprendere anche la scelta di individuare aree forestali da sottoporre a tutela integrale, almeno il 10% degli ecosistemi forestali europei, in particolare per accrescere le foreste primarie e vetuste, a cui si dovrà riconoscere una fondamentale importanza per la tutela della biodiversità e la conservazione di specie e habitat e per migliorare il contributo delle foreste nella lotta ai cambiamenti climatici.
Le foreste sono economicamente importanti per diverse comunità e questo aiuta a mantenere popolati i piccoli borghi, le aree montane e interne e previene l’abbandono dei territori. La funzione socio economica delle foreste deve quindi essere riconosciuta, e le comunità messe in condizione di partecipare allo sviluppo sostenibile del territorio, ma senza deroghe ai principi di conservazione e di ripristino forestale.
La strategia forestale dovrà includere un sostegno all’innovazione nella filiera dei prodotti forestali volta alla sostituzione dei materiali a forte impatto climatico con prodotti legnosi. La filiera legno-energia dovrà seguire il principio dell’uso a cascata e l’utilizzo di filiere corte per l’approvvigionamento delle biomasse industriali, che non devono essere più sostenute da incentivi pubblici.
La strategia forestale europea dovrà trovare rispondenza nelle risorse del programma Next Generation EU, con specifici finanziamenti per la ricerca nella GFSR, nella valorizzazione dei servizi ecosistemici forestali e nella mitigazione degli effetti dei cambiamenti climatici sulle foreste e sulla biodiversità. Inoltre, dovrà comprendere un piano di informazione sull’importanza degli alberi per i cittadini e un ampio programma di formazione per gli addetti ai lavori di tutta la filiera forestale.
Infine, la strategia forestale UE dovrebbe comprendere anche le foreste urbane e peri-urbane, grazie alle quali la lotta e l’adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici può raggiungere un’efficienza ed un’efficacia concreta. La strategia dovrà quindi promuovere la forestazione nelle zone costruite, nelle città e nei fondivalle e nelle aree più inquinate del continente, dove la percentuale di territorio boscato è in diminuzione e dove le foreste possono anche costituire corridoi ecologici per la fauna in città, contribuendo alla sua conservazione e all’attuazione della strategia sulla biodiversità.
Read full responseMeeting with Virginijus Sinkevičius (Commissioner) and
2 Jun 2020 · To discuss the fisheries governance in the Mediterranean and issues relevant for the sustainability of Mediterranean fisheries
Meeting with Miguel Arias Cañete (Commissioner) and Transport and Environment (European Federation for Transport and Environment) and
21 Jan 2019 · Implementation of the RED Directive
Response to Post 2020 light vehicle CO2 Regulation(s)
26 Mar 2018
The proposed annual rate of improvement (15% reduction by 2025 and 30% by 2030) is less ambitious than the current regulations and is not sufficient to curb the growing emissions from the European vehicle fleet. The European Union, in coherence with the Paris Agreement goals, needs to significantly increase the proposed targets. This regulation should set a range of at least 55-60% reduction by 2030, subject to a review in 2022 so as to ratchet up the target, in line with the revision of the EU Paris commitments to be held within 2020.
The only strong element in the Commission proposal is the binding 2025 target, vehemently opposed by the car industry who prefers to delay emission reductions to 2030. In the absence of this the emission reductions in 2030 are halved, jeopardizing national efforts to meet their 2030 climate targets. The required CO2 reduction in 2025 should be increased to 25% and is paramount to ensuring timely investments and innovation in Europe.
With the current super-credit regime failing to drive sufficient sales of zero emission vehicles, the Commission has instead proposed a reward for carmakers who overachieve on the sales benchmark of low and zero emission vehicles (over 15% in 2025 and over 30% in 2030). This voluntary system should instead be turned into a two-way adjustment system to ensure fair distribution of effort and timely deployment of zero emission technology in Europe. Manufacturers should either sell enough ZEVs or do more on their conventional fleets starting from a 25% ZEV sales benchmark in 2025.
Years of the Dieselgate emissions scandal in Europe have exposed the weak and obsolete testing regime and highlighted the need for on-road, transparent and independent tests to ensure compliance in the real world. The current proposal offers the unique chance to ensure lowering and eventually closing the gap between real world emissions and lab CO2 values once vehicles are already in circulation. Instead of using fuel consumption meters merely for ‘monitoring purposes’ of a possible gap, a much more robust system would be to complement the type approval laboratory test with an on-road check before vehicles are placed on the market (Real World Test for CO2), as already done for air pollution, accompanied by in-use checks enforcement using fuel consumption meters once cars are in use. By requiring manufacturers to optimize vehicles’ fuel efficiency on the road, not for the laboratory, the gap between both values can be reduced and eventually closed.
The proposal has big potential to reduce the emissions of light-commercial vehicles and stimulate a market for electric vans, while small e-vans are already cost-effective today. The Commission’s own assessment argues that a -40% reduction would be optimal (but the proposal suggests only -30%).
An earlier review in 2022 (not 2024) of the proposal would allow to adjust the 2030 target to the uptake of ZEVs in the early 2020s and Member States achievements in reaching their 2030 targets. Further, the Commission needs to develop a standardized methodology for assessing the life cycle emissions cars and vans to be able to cover all emissions related to battery electric vehicles. No utility parameter is needed anymore: As technology develops and increasing vehicle mass does not necessarily increase the vehicles’ emissions (example: hybrid vehicles), recent research suggests that the CO2 discounts OEMs could claim are not justified any more.
Electro-mobility is the vehicle technology of the future. While global car makers will go electric, in particular China, Europe cannot remain a “Diesel island”. This regulation should therefore clearly state that by 2030, all new vehicles sales need to be zero emission, to allow the EU to meet its decarbonization targets well before 2050 and remain a globally leading green economy.
Read full responseMeeting with Miguel Arias Cañete (Commissioner) and
30 Apr 2015 · International climate talks and RU climate diplomacy. State of play of legislative files