Interview to Paolina Pepe, managing officer of the Italian Ministry of the Environment.

The Italian Ministry of the Environment is an associated partner of the PEFMED project and has been promoting sustainable patterns of production and consumption for years through the “Environmental footprint assessment program”. Past experiences carried out by the Ministry, such as the “VIVA project” and the “Made Green in Italy” regulation have been capitalised, and acted as a starting point for the PEFMED project.

“This is such a unique wealth of experience accumulated by the ministry in the recent years. And in the initial phase of the PEFMED project it was shared with other institutional partners , in fact, defining indicators concerning not only the environmental aspect but also the social, economic and cultural aspect was really an innovation” explains Ms Pepe. Moreover, the participation of the Ministry to the PEFMED project allowed them to be updated on the main lines of research and technology transfer offered by community programmes and consequently to play an important role of sounding board at national level along with ENEA, the lead partner of the project.