24 February 2014: The European Environment Agency (EEA) released new data demonstrating the decoupling of levels of some pollutants from agriculture and manufacturing from the economic productivity of these sectors and population growth.

The data show that, while not all countries have achieved absolute decoupling, the overall trend is a reduction of water pollution from nutrients, a source of eutrophication of watercourses. The data also highlight reduced heavy metal pollution from the manufacturing sector over the period 2004-2010. The data are presented in an interactive graph presenting the gross value added (GVA) change and the nutrients emission change for all EU countries. [EEA Press Release]