Closer collaboration for greener growth

Last year's United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio showed that in this context the European Union and emerging powers such as China play a key role. We face the same resource pressures and environmental challenges although we are at different development stages.

The EU and China share the vision that environmental protection and economic growth not only can, but must, go hand in hand. Our growth strategy in Europe stresses the importance of more efficient use of natural resources and of reducing emissions and pollution. China's current Five-Year Plan (2011-15) contains very similar aspirations toward a more efficient use of resources, including energy, and introducing new targets for the reduction of key pollutants. Both China and Europe recognize that our future economic growth needs to be green, and this makes us key partners in international cooperation on the Green Economy.

The emphasis put on environmental issues by China's new leadership creates a very good basis for closer cooperation between the EU and China on environmental issues. We have already a very well established ministerial level dialogue aimed at exchanging views on environmental policies in China and in Europe. We have also implemented concrete cooperation projects focused on issues such as public participation in environmental decision-making, improvement of waste management, reduction of air, water and heavy-metal pollution. These projects have been hugely successful as European and Chinese experts work side-by-side to find solutions to concrete problems.

We look forward to some interesting discussions on our visit to China. The actions and decisions we take together in the coming years will be vital, not just for us, but for all citizens of the world.

Janez Potonik is European commissioner for the Environment and Antonio Tajani is vice-president of the European Commission, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship.