Latest news with #EuropeanWaterResilienceStrategy
Euronews
5 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Austrian gunman was obsessed with school shootings, police say
According to police, the gunman was fascinated by school shootings, but his motive remains a mystery. After killing 10 people at the BORG Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz, the perpetrator killed himself. He left the school three years earlier. The incident in Austria's second-largest city was the deadliest mass shooting in the country's recent history. Although his motive for the attack remains unclear, investigators can 'say with certainty that, over the years, he developed a passion for school shootings,' said Michael Lohnegger, the head of Styria province's criminal police office. 'He glorified not just the acts in general, but also the perpetrators who carried out these acts." The gunman had planned the attack meticulously, according to investigators, but they did not know why he chose the date he did for the massacre or why he stopped shooting when he did - the gunman still had many additional bullets. The shooter had no prior criminal record. During a search of his house, police found plans for an explosive attack as well as a non-functioning pipe bomb. Officers also discovered a digital and handwritten suicide note addressed to his parents, although the Director of Public Security Franz Ruf said that it offered no motive. Nine of the 11 people wounded in last week's attack remain in hospital, Lohnegger said on Tuesday, adding that they were not in critical condition. The shooter used two firearms he legally owned to carry out the attack. On Monday, Chancellor Christian Stocker vowed to tighten Austria's gun laws. In the wake of the attack, the mayor of Graz, Elke Kahr, called for a complete ban on private weapons. Gun licenses are "issued too quickly," she said last week. The European Water Resilience Strategy presented this month by the European Commission aims to reduce water pollution, prevent waste and make water accessible to all. The EU's executive body promises to help member states better implement the 2000 Water Framework Directive and three related laws. It will also promote more investment, given the seriousness of the situation. Only 37% of the EU's surface waters have a good ecological status and only 29% have a good chemical status. The continent is the fastest-warming region in the world due to climate change, which has increased the number of water-related natural disasters. Currently, 30% of the EU suffers from water scarcity due to prolonged droughts. Meanwhile, devastating floods caused €325 billion in damage between 1980 and 2023. "Everyone knows the emergency we are in and the investments needed in the sector. We have the numbers," said Hildegard Bentele (Germany/EPP), a centre-right lawmaker who chairs the MEP Water Group at the European Parliament. "We can react with the next EU budget and make better use of Cohesion Policy, because we have seen that the funds have not been used for the necessary investments," she added. According to the European Commission, around €55 billion is spent on water investments across Europe, but there is an annual gap of €23 billion additional funding needed. To address this gap, the EU executive will allocate a larger share of the Cohesion Policy funds, which are intended for less wealthy regions, to water management. In addition, the European Investment Bank will launch a new programme: €15 billion will be available over the period 2025-2027 and it aims to attract a further €25 billion from commercial investors. Industry and agriculture are two sectors that use a lot of fresh water and also contribute to its pollution with chemicals. One of the main issues the Commission intends to address is water pollution, particularly caused by chemicals called PFAS or 'forever chemicals'. "PFAS are substances dubbed forever pollutants because they don't easily break down. So they tend to accumulate over time in the environment. Research has shown that exposure to certain types of PFAS causes serious health problems," said Amandine Hess, Euronews reporter who covered the communication. "The Commission is planning to launch a public-private partnership to support innovation, to clean up pollution from PFAS and other chemicals. The 'polluter pays' principle will be applied, so it means that public funding would be used only for the sites where it has not been possible to identify who is responsible for the pollution," she added. NGOs and the European Green Party say the strategy falls far short of providing concrete answers to the complex problems surrounding water management, pointing to a lack of clear legal requirements and a failure to tackle pollution at source. "The environmentalists are calling for strict management of fertilisers and chemicals. On the other hand, the Commission call to increase water efficiency by at least 10% by 2030 but does not set clear binding targets," said Amandine Hess. MEP Hildegard Bentele admits that a 10% target for water efficiency is "a modest good intention" and acknowledges that member states are lagging behind in implementing legislation, going so far as to say that "we could sanction member states that do not meet the targets". "We are behind schedule, we have not seen much progress in the last 20 years. That is why we need to move faster. I would like to see the Commission more rigorous in this regard in the coming years, including in the new strategy",said MEP Hildegard Bentele. Watch the video here! Journalist: Isabel Marques da Silva Content production: Pilar Montero López Video production: Zacharia Vigneron Graphism: Loredana Dumitru Editorial coordination: Ana Lázaro Bosch and Jeremy Fleming-Jones
Euronews
5 days ago
- Business
- Euronews
Will a new strategy improve European water management?
The European Water Resilience Strategy presented this month by the European Commission aims to reduce water pollution, prevent waste and make water accessible to all. The EU's executive body promises to help member states better implement the 2000 Water Framework Directive and three related laws. It will also promote more investment, given the seriousness of the situation. Only 37% of the EU's surface waters have a good ecological status and only 29% have a good chemical status. The continent is the fastest-warming region in the world due to climate change, which has increased the number of water-related natural disasters. Currently, 30% of the EU suffers from water scarcity due to prolonged droughts. Meanwhile, devastating floods caused €325 billion in damage between 1980 and 2023. "Everyone knows the emergency we are in and the investments needed in the sector. We have the numbers," said Hildegard Bentele (Germany/EPP), a centre-right lawmaker who chairs the MEP Water Group at the European Parliament. "We can react with the next EU budget and make better use of Cohesion Policy, because we have seen that the funds have not been used for the necessary investments," she added. According to the European Commission, around €55 billion is spent on water investments across Europe, but there is an annual gap of €23 billion additional funding needed. To address this gap, the EU executive will allocate a larger share of the Cohesion Policy funds, which are intended for less wealthy regions, to water management. In addition, the European Investment Bank will launch a new programme: €15 billion will be available over the period 2025-2027 and it aims to attract a further €25 billion from commercial investors. Industry and agriculture are two sectors that use a lot of fresh water and also contribute to its pollution with chemicals. One of the main issues the Commission intends to address is water pollution, particularly caused by chemicals called PFAS or 'forever chemicals'. "PFAS are substances dubbed forever pollutants because they don't easily break down. So they tend to accumulate over time in the environment. Research has shown that exposure to certain types of PFAS causes serious health problems," said Amandine Hess, Euronews reporter who covered the communication. "The Commission is planning to launch a public-private partnership to support innovation, to clean up pollution from PFAS and other chemicals. The 'polluter pays' principle will be applied, so it means that public funding would be used only for the sites where it has not been possible to identify who is responsible for the pollution," she added. NGOs and the European Green Party say the strategy falls far short of providing concrete answers to the complex problems surrounding water management, pointing to a lack of clear legal requirements and a failure to tackle pollution at source. "The environmentalists are calling for strict management of fertilisers and chemicals. On the other hand, the Commission call to increase water efficiency by at least 10% by 2030 but does not set clear binding targets," said Amandine Hess. MEP Hildegard Bentele admits that a 10% target for water efficiency is "a modest good intention" and acknowledges that member states are lagging behind in implementing legislation, going so far as to say that "we could sanction member states that do not meet the targets". "We are behind schedule, we have not seen much progress in the last 20 years. That is why we need to move faster. I would like to see the Commission more rigorous in this regard in the coming years, including in the new strategy",said MEP Hildegard Bentele. Watch the video here! Journalist: Isabel Marques da Silva Content production: Pilar Montero López Video production: Zacharia Vigneron Graphism: Loredana Dumitru Editorial coordination: Ana Lázaro Bosch and Jeremy Fleming-Jones Six weeks after Spain and Portugal suffered a massive power outage, authorities in Madrid issued an official report on Tuesday saying April's cascading blackout that left tens of millions disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that led to the grid's failure. Spain's Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation's energy policy, said in a press conference that small grid failures, concentrated in the south of Spain, led to a chain reaction among larger ones. The minister said several technical causes that contributed to the event, including "the poor planning" by operators of the grid who didn't find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations. Aagesen explicitly ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the blackout, blaming instead "vulnerabilities, shortcomings or misconfigurations of security measures that could expose the networks to future risks." The 28 April outage started shortly after 12:30pm in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transport systems, mobile networks, Internet connectivity and other critical infrastructure. In just five seconds, Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity, equivalent to 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain's, also went down. Only the countries' island territories were spared. Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day. The government report included analysts from Spain's national security agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors. The only solid information made public shortly after the system went down came from Spain's grid operator Red Eléctrica, which had narrowed down the source of the outage to two separate incidents in southern Spain where substations had failed. In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power outages and igniting a fierce debate about whether Spain's high levels of renewable power had something to do with the grid failing. Spain is at the forefront of Europe's transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57% of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources like wind, hydropower and solar. The country is also phasing out its nuclear plants. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed back against such speculation and defended renewables. He asked for patience and said that his government would not "deviate a single millimetre" from its energy transition plans, which include a goal of generating 81% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
E&E News
06-06-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Brussels asks EU countries to use less water
The European Union executive has called on member countries to help improve water efficiency across the EU by at least 10 percent by 2030, as the bloc prepares for the worsening effects of climate change. The target — which is not legally binding — is part of the EU's European Water Resilience Strategy, released Wednesday, which aims to restore a water cycle 'deeply affected' by pollution, climate change and environmental degradation. In a seperate recommendation, the European Commission encourages EU countries to 'set their own targets for water efficiency, based on their national circumstances.' Advertisement It comes as Europe faces multiple water-related problems, including PFAS and nitrate pollution, leaky infrastructure, more severe droughts and higher intensity rainfall.
Euronews
06-06-2025
- Health
- Euronews
Danish PM calls for full-face veil ban in educational institutions
The European Commission plans to launch a vast operation to clean up PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances), also known as "forever chemicals" in water through the creation of public-private partnerships. These were the conclusions of the European Water Resilience Strategy, adopted on Wednesday in Brussels. In 2022, out of 1,300 monitoring sites in Europe, 59% of rivers, 35% of lakes and 73% of coastal waters exceeded the environmental quality standard for perfluorooctanesulphonic acid (PFOS), a type of PFAS, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA). In Europe, only 37% of surface waters are in good or very good ecological health and 29% have achieved good chemical status, according to the agency. Environmental associations, which are campaigning for a ban on PFAS at the source, are denouncing this as a "missed opportunity". "We expected to see more ambition to reduce pollution at the source," said Angeliki Lyssimachou, head of science and policy at the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they don't easily break down in the environment and accumulate in humans and animals over time. Health costs are estimated at €52 to €84 billion a year and some of the chemicals have been classified as carcinogenic. These chemical compounds are non-stick, waterproof and resistant to high temperatures. They are also present in many everyday items such as non-stick frying pans, fire-fighting foams and medical devices. Jessika Roswall, the European Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resilience said she was in favour of banning PFAS in consumer products such as cosmetics and food packaging. However, she stressed that it would be difficult to ban all PFASs, as some do not yet have an effective alternative. "The problem is that we need PFASs for many different products. For example, medical products like inhalers (...) or many things for which there is no substitution. In terms of the ecological transition, semiconductors, digitisation or the defence industry," Roswall told Euronews. In a leaked document, the Commission's estimated range for the annual cost of PFAS decontamination in Europe was wide, at anywhere from €5 all the way to €100 billion. For the water sector alone, the cost could increase to up to €18 billion annually for drinking water treatment. For some pollutants, such as TFA (trifluoroacetic acid, a type of PFAS), the clean-up is not so simple. "According to the water companies, it's a very expensive process that involves extracting all the minerals from the water and adding them back. At the end of the day, you're going to lose a lot of water," says Angeliki Lyssimachou. "So you're going to consume a lot more energy. The Commission wants to apply the "polluter pays" principle and reserve public funding for sites where it has not been possible to identify who is responsible. The European Water Resilience Strategy aims to restore the water cycle and ensure access to clean, affordable water at a time when Europe is facing extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. 34% of the EU is affected by water shortages. "Water is life. Water resilience is essential for our citizens, our farmers, the environment and businesses. The Commission's Water Resilience Strategy sets out the path towards a sustainable, resilient, smart and competitive water economy. We must act now to protect this resource," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement. The European action plan also includes raising awareness for these issues through public debates, increasing European funding for infrastructure modernisation, supporting digitisation through the EU's Copernicus Earth observation programme, and supporting innovation. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has called on Thursday for stricter measures limiting religious symbols and rituals in education, asking for a ban on full-coverage veils worn by some Muslim women to be extended to schools and universities. The country's overall ban on burkas and niqabs in public places, introduced in 2018, has not been applied to educational institutions. However, Frederiksen, who is also the leader of the country's Social Democrats party, wants to change this, stating that limiting the ban in this way had been a mistake. "There are gaps in the legislation that allow Muslim social control and oppression of women at educational institutions in Denmark," Frederiksen told domestic media. "You have the right to be a person of faith and practice your religion, but democracy takes precedence." Meanwhile, opponents of the general ban, including civil society organisations such as Amnesty International, said it infringes on women's right to dress as they choose. "All women should be free to dress as they please and to wear clothing that expresses their identity or beliefs," the NGO said in 2018. The announcement is a direct response to recommendations from the Commission for the Forgotten Women's Struggle, which earlier this year called for action. In 2022, the same government-formed commission proposed to impose a ban on the wearing of hijabs in primary schools to ensure 'that women with minority backgrounds can enjoy the same rights and freedoms as other Danish women'. At the time, the ban proposal sparked a backlash and protests in Denmark. The plan was rejected in 2023. Frederiksen also wants prayer rooms to be removed from educational institutions, objecting to the fact that they have been set up at several universities and colleges. The Danish PM does not believe these rooms create inclusiveness, but rather "provide a breeding ground for discrimination and pressure", she explained. While Frederiksen is not asking for an outright ban, she said that Minister for Education and Children Mattias Tesfaye and Minister for Higher Education Christina Egelund will enter into a dialogue with schools and universities about finding a common solution, and "clarify that prayer rooms do not belong there". The Danish society cannot allow itself to be ruled by religious conservatism, Frederiksen told the domestic press. "You're welcome to have your religion, but when you're at school, you're there to be at school and take part in your education," she concluded. North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un has once again affirmed his "unconditional support" for Russia's all-out war against Ukraine during a meeting with a top Russian official. The authoritarian ruler made the comment during talks with Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang on Wednesday, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Kim reiterated his 'unconditional support for the stand of Russia and its foreign policies in all the crucial international political issues including the Ukrainian issue", KCNA reported. The two countries' ties have strengthened in recent years, with Pyongyang sending thousands of troops to Russia to participate in its war against Ukraine. The North Korean soldiers have been deployed in Russia's Kursk region, parts of which were seized by the Ukrainian army in a surprise offensive last August. Speculation about North Korea's deployment of troops to Russia first arose at the end of 2024, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Korean officials accusing Pyongyang of sending soldiers to support Moscow's war efforts. However, it wasn't until April that Moscow and Pyongyang officially confirmed the presence of North Korean troops on the battlefield. A monitoring group comprising South Korea, the US, Japan and eight other countries last week classified Russia and North Korea's military alliance as 'illegal", saying it flagrantly violates UN sanctions. The report said their pact was allowing North Korea to fund its banned ballistic missile programme. The group also expressed concern that Russia might also transfer sophisticated technologies to help North Korea enhance its nuclear weapons programme. In late April, North Korea unveiled the country's first naval destroyer, named the Choe Hyon, which experts say was likely built with Russian assistance, in further proof of growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.
Agriland
05-06-2025
- Business
- Agriland
EU young farmers say new water plan lacks detail on investment
A new plan unveiled by the European Commission this week to protect water supplies in the EU lacks detail on investment and leaves young farmers in the bloc 'wondering about what is to come'. That is according to CEJA, the EU-wide body that represents young farmers, and of which Ireland's young farmer organisation Macra is a member. The commission said that its new European Water Resilience Strategy is aimed at restoring and protecting the water cycle, securing clean and affordable water, and creating as 'sustainable, resilient, smart and competitive water economy'. The plan outlines several actions, including a number for agriculture. These include: supporting the uptake of water reuse practices; maximising the use of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) strategic plans for water resilience through knowledge sharing and improved, independent farm advisory services; and continuing to incentivise farmers to improve the environmental performance of their holdings. However, despite these actions, CEJA said that the commission 'does not clarify its intentions as to the potential revision' of its water legislation, 'leaving young farmers wondering about what is to come after 2027'. The young farmer group said that agriculture is already one of the sectors directly exposed to changing climatic conditions and more frequent seasonal extremes, which have 'detrimental effects' on yields and the socio-economic situation of agri-businesses. Katharina Schobersberger, one of CEJA's vice-presidents, said: 'For agriculture, access to water is an absolute necessity, as food and feed production, as well as the well-being of animals, comes and falls with it. As young farmers, we severely struggle with the negative impacts of climate change on the resilience of our businesses.' Another vice-president, Matteo Pagliarani, said: 'Ensuring that young farmers are equipped with the right tools and opportunities to adapt their on-farm water management is crucial for the future of our entire sector.' According to CEJA, young farmers need higher investment support for on-farm water management for infrastructure, such as water retention basins, rainwater storage, drip irrigation, and desalination plants, as well as increased cooperation with other sectors to use 'repurposed' water. The farm organisation said that, in some member states, on-farm investment not only faces high financial costs but also considerable legal and administrative barriers, leaving young farmers 'empty-handed' when it comes to dealing with extreme weather events. For that reason, CEJA welcomed the creation of a dedicated water programme by the European Investment Bank, which aims to provide enhanced investment into more efficient water management in the private sector. However, the eligibility requirements to access that funding are unclear at this time, which CEJA said poses 'serious questions' as to the actual amount of support farmers will be able to get. The farm organisation said that the European Commission has responsibility to provide 'the right tools and instruments in the agriculture sector to enable adequate adaptation of farming practices to the new climatic and environmental realities.' CEJA also said it 'regrets' that the commission does not 'explicitly state the direction of European water legislation in the upcoming years, hampering potential investments in on-farm water and nutrient management'.
