Indicators

Non-indigenous species pose a significant threat to biodiversity and are a key focus of European Union policy efforts. Around 779 have been reported in Europe's seas, with the rate of new introductions steadily rising since 1970. The average annual rate of new introductions quadrupled compared to the 1970's in the last six-year assessment period of 2012-2017. Half of these introductions occurred via the transport-stowaway/shipping pathway, with 14% through corridors such as manmade waterways that connect adjacent non-EU waters. Stronger action is needed to reduce the risk of new introductions, including harmonised monitoring for NIS across Europe's seas.

The transport sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union and has shown little progress in emission reduction in recent decades. Despite efforts such as increasing the deployment of electric vehicles and promoting low-carbon fuels, transport emissions have only declined slightly since 2005, with a temporary reduction in 2020 due to COVID-19. Estimates of 2024 indicate a small increase in GHG emissions from transport of 0.7%, compared with 2023 levels. Member States project that domestic transport emissions will meet 1990 levels in 2030. International aviation and maritime emissions are projected to increase further.

Increasing forest connectivity is crucial for supporting biodiversity. Connectivity within stocked forest areas is limited by elements fragmenting the tree cover. The European Union's average forest connectivity was 80.6% in 2021, a 0.8% percentage point decrease from 2018. The EU has effective policies promoting forest connectivity. However, the effects of these policies will take time to appear as pest and fire outbreaks which intensify with climate change lead to immediate, often temporary, losses in connectivity. Therefore, it is unlikely that forest connectivity will increase by 2030.

Total per capita waste generation remained near stable in the European Union between 2010 and 2022. Waste generation historically follows trends in economic growth, e.g. during the 2020 economic slowdown and recovery thereafter. The EU aims to signficantly decrease its total waste generation by 2030. Although the observed stability and decoupling of waste generation from economic growth is encouraging, the latest data indicates that the link between economic growth and waste generation remains. Therefore, it is unlikely that waste generation will substantially decrease by 2030.

The 8th Environment Action Programme calls for fossil fuel subsidies to be phased out without delay. Subsidies were stable from 2015-2021, yet more than doubled in 2022 due to high energy prices post-COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, subsequently falling to EUR 111 billion in 2023. While a significant part of fossil fuel subsidies are due to be phased out by 2030, these are largely crisis measures. The EU is likely not on track to make notable progress by 2030, as most Member States lack concrete plans to phase out the significant fossil fuel subsidies that remain.

Eco-innovation, which is crucial for achieving the European Green Deal objective of transitioning to a carbon-neutral and sustainable economy, has increased in the European Union. The European Commission’s eco-innovation index increased by 27.5% from 2014 to 2024, mainly driven by improvements in resource efficiency. This steady increase in recent years is expected to continue, as the European Green Deal has set ambitious environment- and climate-related objectives. Its associated initiatives are very likely to create favourable conditions for more eco-innovation.

Persistent overfishing threatens Europe’s marine ecosystems, food security and biodiversity. While the EU's integrated approach to managing fisheries has recovered some stocks, the overall situation remains critical. Only 28% of assessed stocks are sustainably fished and in good biological condition, with clear regional disparities. These conditions are met by 41% of stocks in the North-East Atlantic and Baltic Seas, compared to 9% in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The EU's aim to restore healthy fish populations and ensure sustainable use have not been achieved, highlighting the need for urgent action.

Human activities and climate change place increasing pressure on the marine environment, leading to shifts in marine primary productivity, food-web dynamics and species’ geographical distributions. The proportion of warm-favouring species in the Greater North and Celtics Seas has risen to 64%, surpassing cold-favouring species since the late-1980s and is positively correlated with recent sea surface temperature increases . Ocean warming, acidification and eutrophication are expected to drive changes further, impacting biodiversity, ecosystems and fishing opportunities.

Imperviousness negatively affects biodiversity, carbon storage and sequestration, soil hydrological properties, ecosystem services and nature conservation. In 2018, the sealed area in the European Union Member States was 110,702km 2 (2.7%). The increase in this area was 3,606km 2 (3.4%) between 2006 and 2018. The largest sealing increase of 1,156km 2 during 2009-2012 fell to half during 2012-2015, yet picked up again from 2015 to 2018 (796 km 2 ). Although most sealing happened in settlements, sealing in cropland was also substantial with 1,383km 2 agricultural area sealed from 2006 till 2018.

At the EU level, only 15% of habitat assessments have a good conservation status, with 81% having poor or bad conservation status. Grasslands, dunes, and bog, mire and fen habitats show strong deteriorating trends, while forests have the most improving trends. The EU did not meet the 2020 target of improving the conservation status of EU protected species and habitats. At the EU Member State level, the majority of assessments indicate a low number of habitats with a good conservation status. Intensive agriculture, urban sprawl and pollution are the top reported pressures to habitats.

Extreme sea levels have increased at many locations along European coastlines, due to increases in mean local sea levels. These ongoing increases will amplify the frequency of 1-in-100 years historical extreme events, by exposing most locations to critical conditions already with a sea level rise value above 10cm. In the absence of better coastal protection, the projected sea level rise would increase the frequency of extreme high coastal water levels by a factor of 10 in most European coastlines prior to 2050, with differences depending on the location and the future climate scenario.

The removal of landscape features on agricultural land in Europe is one of the main agricultural pressures for biodiversity and ecosystem services. The EU Green Deal aims to bring back high-diversity landscape features on at least 10% of agricultural land by 2030, including woody features like tree lines, tree groups and hedges among other small habitats. Copernicus Earth observation data shows, woody landscape features covered 5% of the EU’s agricultural land in 2018.

The Eighth Environment Action Programme calls for the EU to significantly reduce by 2030 its consumption footprint, i.e. the environmental and climate impacts that result from EU citizens’ consumption. This footprint decreased only slightly, by around 4%, between 2010 and 2020. Therefore, at present, it is uncertain if the EU will achieve a significant reduction in its consumption footprint, especially since it has increased since 2016. Major efforts are needed to both reduce the overall level of consumption and increase the use of products that have less impact on the climate and environment.

The total ecological footprint of the 27 EU Member States and the UK is high and now more than twice the biocapacity available in the region. This high footprint means that the region’s total demand for ecological goods and services greatly exceeds the capacity of its ecosystems to produce useful biological products and absorb carbon emissions. Such a large ecological deficit is detrimental to the environment within and outside Europe.

Birds and butterflies are sensitive to environmental change and can indicate the health of the environment. Long-term monitoring shows significant declines in farmland birds and grassland butterflies. Between 1990 and 2019, the index of 168 common birds decreased by 8% in the 25 EU Member States with monitoring schemes. The decline in common farmland birds over the same period was much more pronounced at 27%, while the common forest bird index increased by 5%. Between 1991 and 2018 the grassland butterfly index also declined strongly, by 25%, in the 17 EU countries with monitoring data.

Monitoring the pressure from soil moisture deficits can warn of potential impacts on plant development and soil health, supporting the assessment of drought-tolerant, resilient and vulnerable ecosystems. In 2000-2019, soil moisture in the growing season was several times below the long-term average in the EEA member countries plus the United Kingdom. The largest soil moisture deficits occurred in 2003, 2017 and 2019, affecting over 1.45 million km 2 in 2019. Soil moisture content was also low in 2012, 2015 and 2018, contributing to increasingly frequent and intense drought pressure.

Between 2015 and 2018, recognition and understanding of the term ‘biodiversity’ increased in the EU, with 71% of those interviewed in 2018 having heard the word and 41% knowing what it means. At least 8 out of 10 consider biodiversity loss a serious problem and agree that halting it is important. The biggest perceived threats are air, soil and water pollution, human-induced disasters and climate change. Although less than a third of respondents have heard of the Natura 2000 network, most agree that protected areas are important and are not willing to trade them for economic development.

Healthy, unpolluted soils provide ecosystem services and protect human health. Soils can become polluted when high concentrations of contaminants are released from a point source (such as industry, waste, landfills and spills). A recent conservative projection estimates that the EU has 2.8 million potentially contaminated sites. Current efforts to monitor and remediate these sites vary markedly across Member States. Therefore, coherent efforts supported by an EU-wide policy are needed to fill gaps and speed up the identification and management of sites in need of risk reduction measures and remediation.

Land take, urban sprawl and economic activities lead to habitat fragmentation, decreasing the resilience of ecosystems. Monitoring fragmentation supports policy actions that aim to ensure remaining habitats can support biodiversity. Fragmentation affects all areas of Europe, even very sparsely populated ones. Moreover, in the EU plus the United Kingdom, 27% of land is considered highly fragmented where habitats are less than 0.02km 2 on average. However, policy measures to protect certain areas seem to be effective in preventing fragmentation, particularly in protected areas.

Ecosystem degradation threatens biodiversity and resilience to climate change, and tackling it is a major goal of EU environmental policy. Vegetation productivity is a key indicator of ecosystem condition and can be used to monitor the effects of climate, land use and land use change. From 2000 to 2016, productivity in Europe showed a regional pattern of increase and decline, driven in part by climatic variation, but most notably by land use change. Agricultural land management and converting land for agriculture drove productivity increases, whereas urban sprawl caused declines.