§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will differentiate between the roles of the European Environmental Statistics Office, the Corine programme and the proposed European-environment monitoring and information network.
§ Mr. TrippierThe role of the Statistical Office of the European Communities is to collect, co-ordinate and disseminate statistics to assist in the formulation and monitoring of a wide range of Community policies. The office is mainly concerned with economic and social statistics; its programme of work on environmental statistics has only just begun.
The Corine programme is an experimental project run by the European Commission to assemble information on 247W environmental topics that can be mapped and tabulated using geographic information systems as a management tool.
The role of the proposed European Environment Agency and the European environment monitoring and information network is to provide the Commission and member states with objective environmental information and analysis. Where necessary the agency will draw on the work of the Statistical Office to avoid duplication of effort and the Corine-related work will pass to the agency if and when it is established in due course.