From clean air to pesticides: how UK has lagged behind EU on the environment

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/19/from-clean-air-to-pesticides-how-uk-has-lagged-behind-eu-on-the-environment

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Labour has continued to diverge from bloc’s laws, meaning most of UK’s protections are weaker than pre-Brexit

UK falling behind EU on environmental rules amid post-Brexit rollback

Keir Starmer’s government has continued to diverge from EU environmental laws since the Labour party won the 2024 general election, meaning the UK’s environmental protections are weaker than before Brexit.

From putting rare species at risk by ditching the habitats directive to failing to keep up with chemicals regulations that keep people and wildlife safe, here are some of the areas in which the UK has fallen behind.

Protecting rare creatures

When the UK was in the EU, it was under the habitats directive, which meant developers were not allowed to negatively affect the habitats of rare creatures such as nightingales, dormice and red squirrels without mitigation on the same site. Labour is ripping this up with its planning and infrastructure bill, which allows developers to pay into a general nature fund rather than keeping or creating new habitat nearby to make up for what is destroyed.

Water policy

The UK has failed to put into practice new, stronger obligations the EU has levied on water companies and municipal areas to keep sewage, chemicals and other pollution out of rivers and seas. The main divergence is with the 2024 urban wastewater treatment directive that the EU has introduced. This applies stricter treatment standards to water in urban areas, including the removal of micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals and microplastics. There are also rules the UK still officially falls under, such as the water framework directive, which asks all EU member states to clean up their rivers by a certain point. However, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has found England is falling behind, and is unlikely to meet targets. It has said England will miss them by a “considerable” margin.

Its main target under regulations related to the water framework directive is to bring 77% of surface water bodies into good ecological status by 2027. In reality, this figure could be as low as 21%. In light of these findings, the OEP has launched an investigation into possible failures of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency to comply with the water framework directive. Without the threat of punishment from the EU, there are few consequences for ignoring the directive.

Clean air

The EU recently made a change to the ambient air quality directive, which tightens air quality standards and which the UK has not followed suit on. Under this, there are much lower thresholds for safe levels of particulates, which can cause lung cancer and various other diseases. The EU has also made changes to the industrial emissions directive, ozone depleting substances and fluorinated gases (F-gases), which the UK has not kept pace with either. Under the national emissions ceiling regulations, the UK government under the Conservatives decided to regress from legislation as it was set at the point of Brexit. As a result of all these decisions, air quality regulations are significantly tighter in the EU than in the UK.

Climate policy

While UK emissions have fallen faster than in many parts of the EU, this is mostly from decarbonising the power supply, most notably phasing out coal. The next stage will be more difficult for the country, as it decarbonises the heating, transport, and land use and agriculture sectors. Though the UK and EU share broad goals such as the net zero 2050 target, the EU has set legally binding targets in areas including energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy performance of buildings, while the UK has not.

The EU’s revised 2024 methane regulation requires the fossil gas, oil and coal sectors to measure, monitor, report and verify their methane emissions, and take action to reduce them. It also progressively implements stricter requirements on imported fossil fuels with the ambition that they will eventually be subject to the same monitoring, reporting and verification as providers inside the EU. The UK has not done this.

Chemicals

The EU has banned 13 dangerous chemicals since Brexit. The UK has not banned any, according to research by the Chem Trust. This is because the UK has replicated the EU’s chemicals regulator Reach, and the UK version is considered by experts to be underfunded and inadequate, meaning it takes longer to test and ban chemicals. The EU has added 41 chemicals to its watchlist, which means they may be banned soon subject to further analysis, while the UK has added zero.

Banned chemicals include lead gunshot in wetland, intentionally added microplastics, and “forever chemicals” in firefighting foams. The UK promised a new UK chemicals strategy in 2018, but has still not released one. Other directives the EU has recently strengthened in relation to chemicals include the classification, labelling and packaging regulation, ecodesign framework, urban wastewater treatment directive and industrial emissions directive.

Deforestation

The UK was supposed to remove products such as cocoa, soy and palm oil from areas with illegal deforestation after the Environment Act was passed in 2021. However, this has still not happened. The EU, meanwhile, has implemented its deforestation-free products regulation, which is more ambitious than the UK equivalent, as it tackles not just illegal deforestation but all deforestation in sensitive areas for seven key products.

Circular economy

Experts say it is critical that people stop wasting so many consumer products, and have pushed for a transition to a circular economy. This means that as much is recycled, and as little wasted, as possible. The EU has legislated in a wide range of areas – critical raw materials, batteries, textiles and food waste, product liability, repair of goods, and ecodesign among others. There are fears the UK will become a dumping ground for products not designed to the EU’s new ecodesign standards, which stipulate their recyclability and energy efficiency. This is because they will not be allowed to be sold in the EU, but can be in the UK.

Marine policy

This is one area in which the UK has diverged positively. English North Sea waters and all Scottish waters were recently closed for sandeel fishing, which is crucial for seabirds such as puffins as these little eels make up most of their food source. This was contested by the EU, which took the UK to court, but the ban was upheld. The UK has also developed more marine protected areas since Brexit than the EU. However, there has so far been a lack of implementation and enforcement of fishing bans, leading campaigners to label these “paper parks”.

Pesticides

There has been a divergence in pesticide standards, with the EU having banned more and the UK not following suit. The UK has weakened pesticide maximum residue levels on a number of substances allowed on or in food of both animal and non-animal origin (ie plants) to below where they were at the point of Brexit. However, the government indicated that after the UK-EU reset talks this spring, there would be an alignment on pesticides. Details on this have yet to be released. The UK has also closed the gap on bee-killing neonicotinoids, which were banned in the EU but continued to be used in the UK for the four years after Brexit until this year, when they were finally removed from use.

Agriculture

After leaving the EU, the UK left the common agricultural policy, which was the method the EU used to subsidise farmers. Rather than paying farmers per hectare they managed, the UK government decided to pay them for delivering “public goods” such as restoring nature by creating habitats for rare creatures. However, the policy has stopped and started, and all UK farmers have had to contend with significantly less certainty over future payments than their EU counterparts. CAP budgets are planned in seven-year cycles, while the UK’s is subject to surprise cuts. The government recently announced the budget for farmers would be cut by an average of £100m a year until 2029. This lack of certainty and funding could hinder the environmental improvements these new schemes are intended to bring about.

Invasive species

The UK is far behind the EU on listing invasive species of special concern. The UK has listed 66, but the EU will soon have listed more than 100. This is partly because there are more pathways for entry into the EU, but the true number of invasive species is likely to be higher, and these pose a great threat to native wildlife as well as food production. The UK has not added any invasive species of special concern to its list since Brexit, as environmental regulation has stalled.