APRAISE · Assessment of Policy Impacts on Sustainability in Europe

The EU has formulated ambitious environmental policy targets in a variety of sectors aimed at forming the basis for a sustainable European growth with increasing prosperity and reduced pressure on natural resources and the environment. The overall motivation of the APRAISE (Assessment of Policy Interrelationships and Impact on Sustainability in Europe) project is to improve the decision basis for EU and national policy makers for selecting an efficient environmental policy mix leading to the transition towards a sustainable European society, including appropriate support for environmental investments. APRAISE aims to provide an improved understanding of the efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy of environmental policies impacts and their interactions at both the European and Member State level by taking into consideration the social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainable development. Furthermore, APRAISE will offer guidance on ex-ante policy impact assessment and come up with general policy recommendations. APRAISE will therefore assist policymakers in reducing inefficiencies in policy design and to create win-win situations whereby economic strength goes hand in hand with environmental protection and efficient use of natural resources.The strategy of APRAISE is to combine an empirical data collection and assessment component with model-based policy scenario analysis in order to achieve a synergetic use of a variety of empirical and model-based impact assessment tools using different sources of data. The empirical component consists of ex-post assessments of policy effects, costs and social implications as well as on an improved systems understanding including interactions between different policies. In addition, the effects of environmental policies on technology development and deployment will be empirically analyzed through the use of both top-down and bottom-up models. Furthermore, stakeholder consultations will provide input through their diverse perspectives that exist within industry and government and validate the relevance of the different model components, in particular the outputs from model-based scenario analysis. Exchanges between the empiric and model-based components and their results’ integration of APRAISE will lead to methodological and policy recommendations .The overarching motivation of the APRAISE project is to contribute to the research and application of sustainability oriented policymaking by building a more comprehensive understanding of the policy systems at the sectoral level, the national level, and a pan-European level. Including interrelationships and trade offs within each level on different scales of observation is of crucial importance when designing efficient policy mixes that can lead Europe to more significant sustainable pathways. European and national policymakers need a more holistic understanding of these relationships in order to design efficient environmental policies.""