EU military greening policies: A review of transparency and implementation

About this report

Europe’s environment is under pressure and there is an urgent need for all sectors – including the military – to contribute to improving the EU’s environmental outlook. The newly updated EU Strategic Compass outlines a commitment to substantially increase EU military and security spending by 2030, while also embedding climate change and environmental considerations. However, at present it is unclear how effective military “greening” policies have been to date.

Many EU militaries have well-established environmental policies and implementation programmes, but the mechanisms in place to demonstrate their effectiveness to external stakeholders, are unclear. Military exemptions can also apply to some environmental legislation and it is important this does not weaken environmental protection measures or reduce scrutiny. Robust and effective environmental policy is all the more important when disapplication, exemption or derogation of external environmental legislation applies.

This review maps out the environmental policies and greening initiatives that EU militaries have in place, including the extent to which environmental performance reporting is made publicly available. The review also draws on direct feedback from EU defence ministries on their environmental policies, as well as from other stakeholders with an interest in military environmental policy.

We find that without significant improvements in reporting it will remain difficult to determine the effectiveness of environmental policy implementation across EU militaries. The report was commissioned by the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament and written by CEOBS.

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EU military greening policies: A review of transparency and implementation