Context of the contract. Article 14 of the Procedural Regulation8 provides that, where the Commission takes a negative decision in cases of unlawful aid, the Member State concerned has to take all necessary measures to recover the aid from the beneficiaries. Paragraph 3 of the same article clarifies that “… recovery shall be effected without delay and in accordance with the procedures under the national law of the Member State concerned, provided that they allow for the immediate and effective execution of the Commission’s decision. To this effect and in the event of a procedure before national courts, the Member States concerned shall take all necessary steps which are available in their respective legal systems, including provisional measures, without prejudice to Community law”. The experience of the State aid enforcement unit of DG Competition shows that there are large delays in the execution of recovery decisions by the Member States. In 2005, DG COMP launched a study on the enforcement of Community State aid law at national level. The study also looked into the implementation of recovery decisions in a small sample of Member States (i.e. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain). The consultants confirmed that, in spite of some improvement in recent years, the Member States’ track record in executing recovery decisions is still far from satisfactory. They concluded that delays in the implementation of such decisions are due to a variety of factors. In some cases, the authorities responsible for the 8 Council Regulation (EC) No 659/1999 of 22 March 1999 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 93 of the EC Treaty. Official Journal L 83, 27.03.1999 recovery of the aid do not use all measures available under national law. In other cases, the main reason is the mere length of national administrative and court procedures. Finally, the Commission has also found cases in which deficiencies in the recovery procedures under national law stand in the way of a swift execution of the recovery decision. The study identified two specific issues that should be addressed in order to speed up the execution of recovery decisions. According to the study, it would be useful to explore in more detail what possibilities exist under national law for the authorities to take provisional measures against beneficiaries of unlawful and incompatible aid. A second question that needs further clarification is the conditions under which national courts can suspend the execution of recove...
Context of the contract. Xxxxxxxxxx, previously known as GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), is the European Programme for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation. The use of the Copernicus services is an integrated part of EEA’s strategy to improve environmental information. Xxxxxxxxxx also plays an important role in the implementation of the principles of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS), and has the potential to make effective use of existing infrastructures in accordance with the INSPIRE directive. In the global context, Copernicus is an integral part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). XXX plays a key role in the operation of the Copernicus services, in particular in the technical coordination and implementation of the Pan-European and Local component of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, and of the Copernicus Reference Data Access (RDA) component. Under the Copernicus regulation4 the Copernicus services cross-cutting in-situ coordination will be delegated to the EEA as part of the Copernicus programme in 2014-2020. In-situ data have been defined for the Copernicus programme as: “all non-space-born data with a geographic dimension, including observation data from ground-, sea- or air-borne sensors as well as reference and ancillary data 4 See footnote No 2.
Context of the contract. (s) Strategic discussions amongst member countries, European Parliament and the main EU institutions responsible for environmental policy, reporting and assessment (DG ENV, EEA, ESTAT and JRC) have underlined an increasing need for factual and quantitative information on the state of the environment to be based on timely, quality assured data, in particular in land cover and land use related issues. Pursuant to the Regulation (EU) No 911/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2010 on the European Earth Monitoring Programme (GMES) and its initial operations (2011 to 2013) and to the delegation agreement signed between the EC and the EEA, the technical coordination of the 8 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe 9 Food and Agriculture Organization 10 The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (xxx.xxxxxx.xxx) 11 Water Information System for Europe implementation of the pan-European and local component of the GMES Initial Operations land monitoring services is delegated to the EEA. For the implementation of this pan-European GMES Initial Operations service on land monitoring 2012, a CLC (Xxxxxx Land Cover) update will be combined with the production of 5 high resolution land cover characteristics datasets for the reference year 2012, to provide a set of cost-effective operational services on core land cover and land use data at European level, based on high resolution ortho-rectified multi-temporal satellite data. These land cover characteristics data will support a wide range of environmental information requirements for framing, implementing and evaluating several policy areas at European level, and to the extent feasible at national and regional level.
Context of the contract. XXX plays a key role in the development of the Copernicus services, in particular in the technical coordination of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. Use of the Copernicus services is an integrated part of EEA’s strategy to improve environmental information. Xxxxxxxxxx also plays an important role in the implementation of the principles of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS), and has the potential to make effective use of existing infrastructures in accordance with the INSPIRE directive. In the global context, Copernicus is an integral part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). EEA is the coordinator of the Pan-European, Local and Reference Data Access component (RDA) of the Copernicus Land Monitoring service. Cross service in-situ coordination will also be delegated to the EEA under the Copernicus programme in 2014-2020. In situ data have been defined for the Copernicus programme as: “all non-space-born data with a geographic dimension, including 'observation data from ground-, sea- or air-borne sensors as well as reference and ancillary data licensed or provided for use in Copernicus”. The Land monitoring service of the Copernicus programme, managed by Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry3 of the European Commission, is about to finalise the implementation of its Initial Operations (GIO) phase as arranged for by Regulation (EU) No 911/2010 of 22 September 2010 of the European Parliament and the Council on the European Earth monitoring programme (GMES/Copernicus) and its initial operations (2011 to 2013)4. With the publication of Regulation (EU) No 377/2014 of 3 April 2014 of the European Parliament and the Council, establishing the Copernicus Programme and repealing Regulation (EU) No 911/20105, the European Union Earth Observation programme entered its full operational phase.
Context of the contract. The EEA mandate is “to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe’s environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy-makers, public institutions and the public”. The terms “significant”, “measurable” and “reliable” indeed require carrying out all necessary data processing with the appropriate statistical soundness. For the purposes of these tender specifications, the term “statistical” should be understood in its widest acceptation and addresses all statistical and probabilistic concepts and techniques that help understand the relationships between figures having random and uncertain components and assessing their likelihood or uncertainty. The challenge posed by these three terms is accentuated further by the term ‘improvement’ that explicitly underscores that trends and forecasts should be established and their likelihood assessed. In line with the EEA Strategy 2009-13, three out of four key objectives in the EEA Annual Management Plan 2011 may require statistical support: Objective 1: “Resource efficiency, the green economy and physical ecosystem accounting”, Objective 2: “Climate change mitigation and adaptation”. This objective includes e.g. the addressing and basic understanding of vulnerability of populations and natural systems in a possibly changing climate, Objective 4: “Supporting environmental reporting within the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Arctic”. By nature, available observations of environmental data are at different time and space scale and different quality, and in most cases they have been collected without any statistical guidelines. Considering the requirements for soundness, on the one hand, and domains of environmental assessment, on the other, developments in EEA tasks necessitate a) increasingly frequent use of statistical methods and appropriate use of the related tools with the precautions required by the very broad range of data quality, especially in integration of spatial data, and b) re-sampling of existing heterogeneous data sets, especially in the data processing related to accounting of ecosystems at large and quantifying the relationships between pressures (possibly estimated from driving forces) and observations. Another developing domain is the increasing use of outcomes from statistical surveys to populate spatial data (providing attributes values to features) and the redesigning of data-flows based on...
