Mainstreaming environmental issues in sectoral policies and programming has been a priority of the European Commission for the past ten years.  The Commission communication on "The European Community's Development Policy" (COM (2000) 212 final of 26.04.2000) makes the environment a guiding principle and provides for it to be mainstreamed in the six priority areas for action and at every level of Community intervention.
However, environment mainstreaming in development programmes remains modest in comparison with the scale of the task and expectations.
The European Commission has therefore decided to take steps for the development of a manual and appropriate methodological tools and to set up training schemes and a help-desk both for its own aid officials and for officials of countries eligible for development aid so that environmental concerns can be effectively mainstreamed in development programmes.