The European Commission is taking Poland to the European Court of Justice for breaking European environmental law by illegally exploring for shale gas. EU environmental law requires impact assessments for drilling to a depth of more than 1,000 meters, whereas in Poland, impact assessments are only necessary for drilling deeper than 5,000 meters.

Europe’s highest court ruled on April 28 that the calculation the European Commission uses to set the maximum amount of free carbon permits issued to industries is flawed. Discrepancies in the data provided by the bloc's 28 nations on new industrial installations led to the error, the court said. It gave the Commission 10 months to review the policy. The ruling will not be retroactive and will not affect the overall cap of the EU's Emissions Trading System, but it could lead to a slight cut in the share of free permits issued to industry from 2018.

The top administrative court in France overturned a 2014 ban on genetically modified (GM) corn earlier this month. The April 15, 2016, ruling overturned a March 2014 decree that prohibited Monsanto's MON 810 corn, stating that the corn did not demonstrate serious health or environmental risks, as required by the European Union's rules for withdrawing a GM crop already approved by the EU. But the ruling was largely symbolic, as France has already legislatively banned the growing of any GM corn.

The European Union passed a new regulation to prevent misleading claims on energy efficiency for home appliances, but excluded a key product: light bulbs. Companies will no longer be able to test refrigerators, TVs, and dishwashers using a 10% margin of error between their advertised and actual energy consumption, under an amendment to the EU's ecodesign law. But due to the EU’s fear of a possible collapse of the light bulb sector, which might not be ready to face the new rule, light bulbs will be exempt from this requirement.

European Union member states agreed on a plan to end the overfishing of cod, herring, and sprat in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday, April 22. The multi-year deal attempts to ensure that the species are managed sustainably and to take into account the interdependence of the three types of fish. Under the current plan, only cod are subject to management, which threatens the livelihood of all three species: sprats and herrings eat the eggs of cod, and cod eat sprats and herrings.

Germany, France, and Britain pressed the European Union for more ambitious greenhouse gas targets at a meeting of environment ministers last Friday, clashing with the EU executive and several eastern and central European states. The big states led criticism of a draft text that said the bloc does not need to revise upward its targets until the next decade as it tries to decide how to share the burden of meeting those among its 28 member countries. So far, the EU has agreed to cut emissions by at least 40% by 1990 levels by 2030 and to a first global stock-take in 2023.

A growing number of pollinator species worldwide are being driven toward extinction by diverse pressures, many of them human-made, threatening millions of livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of food supplies, according to the first global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released February 26. Bees and other pollinators face increasing risks to their survival, threatening foods such as apples, blueberries and coffee worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

On February 3, 2016, the European Parliament supported a compromise deal that allows vehicles to continue to pollute more than the official limits. This disregards the call for stricter reform that followed the Volkswagen emissions-test cheating scandal. In September, Volkswagen admitted that it cheated on U.S. diesel emissions tests, which caused outrage in Europe where approximately half of the vehicles run on diesel. The Parliament's vote was almost blocked by opponents who viewed it as too lenient, but they narrowly missed the votes needed.

On December 14, 2016, the European Parliament delayed a vote on limits to car pollution. The proposal is supported by automakers whereas environmentalists are pushing for the enactment of tougher rules. Parliament members disagreed over whether to seek tougher pollution limits even if that would result in a delay in the vote. The limits, as currently set, would permit cars to continue emitting more than twice the official limits on nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, which can cause respiratory illness and premature death.

The European Union approved a plan to give sub-standard homes a green makeover, but only after a large downgrade of the initial plan. The Energiesprong project planned to give 10-day green makeovers for more than 100,000 public housing units by installing wraparound insulating facades, solar panels, and Ikea kitchens. But the EU approved only 10% of the scope of the original project. The new plan will provide 5,000 remodels in the United Kingdom and 5,000 in France. Energiesprong is now asking the United Kingdom government to help with financing the project.