Programme of the Slovak Government and Sustainable Development

Minister of the Environment addresses an appeal to all his partners and colleagues from environmental as well as non-environmental sector to make their work more effective and to make environmental protection on the basis of sustainable development the first priority.

He makes a balance of the work of the Ministry and his own in the last year. As the most significant successes he considers, besides others, establishment of the Government' s Council for Sustainable Development, development of the National Biodiversity Strategy project, meeting the Ministers of the Environment of the Visegrad group, establishment of the Office for Public Relations at the Ministry and better co-operation with NGOs. Another important success is that the Slovak Republic chaired the 4^th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity within which the Minister of the Environment of the SR presided over the Bureau of the 4^th Conference during the extraordinary session of the Parties concerning the Protocol on Biological Safety.

The Minister sees problems in insufficient information flow, in the necessity to amend laws for the environment and in the institution building of environmental sector, what followed also from negotiations with EU.