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This report summarises a horizon scanning exercise conducted from March to August 2024 with experts from the European Environment Agency (EEA), its country network (Eionet), and external specialists. The study identifies 14 emerging developments that may significantly affect environmental policies and practices across Europe. This systematic process to detect weak signals (topics not yet prominent in research, media coverage, or political agendas) aims to support proactive decision-making and inform upcoming policy debates at both national and EU levels. Horizon scanning for environmental policy is an approach to identify novel trends with potentially far-reaching implications that remain underexplored. Early awareness of such trends enhances foresight capacities within the EEA and Eionet, enabling environmental institutions to respond strategically to future threats and seize emerging opportunities. The selected issues highlight the close connection between environmental sustainability and technological innovation, socio-economic transitions, and broader geopolitical factors. This report emphasises the importance of anticipatory governance in managing complexity and uncertainty and offers a wide selection to encourage debate and analysis.

Whereas the processes underlying surface ozone air pollution episodes are relatively well known, the interplay of anthropogenic and biogenic sources related to both short- and long-lived precursors presents a challenge for the identification of optimal mitigation strategies. The most common concern relates to (i) the spatial scale at which emission reduction strategies must be implemented, and (ii) the apparent limited efficiency of past efforts with regards to recent ozone trends. We provide a short synthesis of the recent evidence in relation to (i) ozone formation processes, (ii) trends of ozone in the last few decades, (iii) significance of methane as an ozone precursor, (iv) the impact of climate change on future ozone.

This study assesses progress towards the Zero Pollution Action Plan (ZPAP) goal of reducing microplastic emissions into the environment by 30% by 2030. The lack of consistent EU monitoring data and harmonised analytical methods makes it necessary to define new indicators. Following the European Commission's Impact Assessment Report “Combatting microplastic pollution in the European Union”, this study examines trends from 2016 to 2022 in key sources of microplastics, including tyre abrasion, plastic pellets, paints and textiles and develops qualitative and semi-quantitative analyses. Based on data from Eurostat and sectoral reports, the report defines a composite indicator which shows a 7.5-8.6% increase in emissions over this period. Specifically, indicators for tyre abrasion rose by 12.3%, plastic pellets by 7%, and paint by 5%. Despite uncertainties in estimates, the findings suggest that microplastic emissions have not decreased since 2016, confirming the importance of recent or forthcoming European initiatives to reduce microplastic emissions (REACH restriction, Euro7, etc.).

Horizon scanning is a systematic process encompassing the identification of weak signals of emerging trends, events and issues of policy relevance. Emerging environmental issues are phenomena that are completely new, which are known but new to environmental policymakers, or known but controversial or uncertain, including changes to the understanding, exposure or perception of an issue. Horizon scanning enables policymakers to gain new insights about future developments and make strategic decisions that strengthen the resilience of current policies to future shocks and uncertainty. In March 2022, the European Environment Agency and the European Topic Centre for Sustainability Transitions (ETC ST) initiated a participatory horizon scanning process involving the Eionet Groups (EGs) on Foresight and State of the Environment (SoE). One of the aims of the exercise was to identify and briefly characterise a set of emerging issues of relevance to the environment around a topic or topics of relevance to the Eionet countries. The topics selected by the participants were land use and the circular economy. This report presents the characterisation of eight emerging issues, four on land use and four on the circular economy. It aims to plant seeds and trigger curiosity around the risks and opportunities these issues may pose to the environment and environmental policy at the EU and at the country level. Depending on their nature, the emerging issues differ considerably in the availability of empirical data, knowledge of environmental impacts, and how uncertain their development is. What they have in common is that they all bear novel aspects and have environmental relevance.