The European Environment Agency (EEA), with support from Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) Lithuania, undertook an evaluation of the maturity of environmental information sharing and dissemination in the six Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Republic of Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine). The activity aims to assist the countries in developing a national roadmap with concrete measures for modernising environmental information systems and raising the profile of environmental information in national open data and e-government processes.

In this context, the European Environment agency organised a first regional event in Kiev, Ukraine on 5-6 March 2019 with representatives from all six Eastern Partnership countries. Participants reviewed the findings of the evaluation on open data maturity across the region in view of designing a series of country-specific national events.

The roundtable aims to identify concrete steps to advance the sharing and integration of environmental information by exploring the legal, organisational and technical conditions framing the national e-government and open data initiatives. Moreover, this project activity is closely linked with activities overseen by the UNECE Aarhus Convention and Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers, as well as with current initiatives taking place in the European Union on open data, streamline reporting and improving the access to environment information.

Some related Initiatives in the EU:

• Streamlining Environmental Reporting in the EU
• Open Data Maturity in Europe 2018
• Promotion of good practices for national environmental information systems and tools for data harvesting at EU level