Abstract
Implementation is key to achieving EU and national environmental objectives. However, implementation of environmental rules is still insufficient and current gaps cost EU citizens around 55 billion euro each year (COWI and Eunomia, 2019). The reasons for inadequate implementation of EU environmental legislation are manyfold and differ not only from one Member State to another but also between sectors. This is the background against which the EU Commission launched in 2016 the Environmental Implementation Review (EIR), a tool to improve implementation of EU environmental law and policy.