Summary

  • BEREC Office Director Verena Weber signed the EU Agencies Network Green Charter on 23 October, committing the agency to measure emissions and prioritise cuts in travel.
  • The Office’s 2025 report puts high-level meeting travel at 174 tonnes, up from 157.8 in 2024, while working-group meetings fell from 53 to 50.7 tonnes.

The pen had a quiet day. The flight schedule will have a harder one. On 23 October, Verena Weber signed the EU Agencies Network Green Charter for the BEREC Office, the agency that supports Europe’s telecom regulators. The charter points to climate-neutral operations by 2030 and puts travel high on the list of emissions to measure and reduce.

BEREC already has a ledger for that promise. Its 2024 Greening Action Plan identified air travel to physical meetings as the central measured footprint of BEREC’s work. The Office’s 2025 annual report then split the traffic into two telling lines. Working-group meetings generated 50.7 tonnes of carbon footprint, down from 53 tonnes in 2024 but 0.7 tonne above the year’s 50-tonne target. High-level meetings reached 174 tonnes, up from 157.8 tonnes. That figure stayed under its separate 180-tonne target. A target met and a trend moving the wrong way can occupy the same row of the ledger.

The report says flights to Board of Regulators and Contact Network meetings increased mainly because of where those meetings were held. It also says the BEREC Office cut emissions from its own staff mission flights. Those are different journeys in different reporting scopes. The greener office trip does not book a seat for a regulator flying to a plenary.

The 2024 plan was already in place when the Office’s Management Board authorised a Green Charter signature in December that year. October’s signing adds a public pledge to an existing operating test. The next decisive document is a meeting plan that shows where the high-level gatherings go and how their travel footprint changes.

Sources