Environmental policy of the European Union
The European Union 'Environmental Policy' was initiated in 1973 with the "Environmental Action Programme" at which point the Environmental Unit was formed. The policy has thereafter evolved "to cover a vast landscape of different topics enacted over many decades" and in 2015 the Institute for European Environmental Policy estimated that "the body of EU environmental law" amounted to more than 500 directives, regulations and decisions.
"Over the past decades the European Union has put in place a broad range of environmental legislation. As a result, air, water and soil pollution has significantly been reduced. Chemicals legislation has been modernised and the use of many toxic or hazardous substances has been restricted. Today, EU citizens enjoy some of the best water quality in the world"
History
Start at the Paris summit 1972
The Paris Summit meeting of heads of state and government of the European Economic Community in October 1972 is often used to pin point the beginning of the EU's environmental policy. A declaration on environmental and consumer policy was adopted at this summit which requested the European Commission to draw up an action programme for environmental protection. This Environmental Action Programme was adopted in July 1973 and represented the EU's first environmental policy. Furthermore, the task force within the Commission that drew up this action programme eventually led to the formation of a Directorate General for the Environment.The primary reason at that time for the introduction of a common environmental policy was the concern that diverse environmental standards could result in trade barriers and competitive distortions in the Common Market. Different national standards for particular products, such as limitations on vehicle emissions for the lead content of petrol, posed significant barriers to the free trade of these products within the Economic Community. An additional motivation driving the EU's emerging environmental policy was the increasing international politicisation of environmental problems and the growing realisation from the beginning of the 1970s that environmental pollution did not stop at national borders, but had to be addressed by cross-border measures. At that time there was no mention of environmental policy in the founding treaties of the EU and therefore no explicit Treaty basis which underpinned EU environmental policy. However, the Treaty text was interpreted dynamically, enabling environmental policy to be regarded as an essential goal of the Community, even though it was not explicitly mentioned. It was not until the middle of the 1980s and the signing of the Single European Act in 1986 that economic and ecological objectives were put on a more equal footing within the Community.
Numerous actors involved
EU environmental policy is shaped by a variety of actors including all of the main EU institutions as well as lobby groups which makeup the wider Brussels policy making community.Member states shape EU environmental policy by working within the Council of Ministers. The council is a central actor in decision making in the EU sharing its decision-making power with the European Parliament under the 'ordinary legislative procedure'. There are different Council formations one of which is the Environment Council. The number of Environment Council meetings has increased significantly over time. Heads of state meet in something different – the European Council – which until recently had very little to do with environmental policy. However, more recently the European Council has played an important role in EU climate change policy in particular.
The European Commission not only has an exclusive right to propose new environmental policy, but it also has a responsibility to ensure the implementation of environmental rules. Therefore, since its creation in the 1950s the European Commission has been at the heart of the European Union. However, it did not set up a unit dedicated to environmental issues until the 1970s and a full Directorate General for the environment until 1981. Initially DG Environment was perceived as a relatively weak DG but it has gradually become more assertive through the development of technical and political expertise. However, the Commission still has to depend on member states to implement its policies.
Traditionally, the European Parliament gained a reputation as a champion of environmental interests within the EU where it provided an access point for those excluded from decision making and a voice for green political parties. However, it was a reactive and relatively weak institution. More recently the Parliament has benefited from treaty changes that have made it a co-legislator with the Council of Ministers. However, the empowerment of the Parliament seems to have reduced its green credentials as it now appears less willing to adopt green amendments.
Over the last 40 years the EU has attracted the interest of a vast number of lobby groups including environmental NGOs. As early as 1974, environmental groups from all the member states established a central representation in Brussels, founding the European Environmental Bureau. Other environmental NGOs only set up shop in Brussels from the late 1980s onwards. European institutions, especially the European Commission, provide relatively easy access to these groups compared to some national governments. The European Commission has even actively encouraged their participation in policy making by setting up consultative committees and other bodies, and providing funds to establish and maintain certain core groups.
A complex policy processes
Policy making in the EU can be complex. It has been suggested that the policy making process is too densely populated with veto players for any single actor or group of actors to consistently control the direction of policy making. The result in environmental policy making has been widely depicted as being especially unpredictable, unstable and at times even chaotic. However, the European Commission, as a key player in the policy making process, has been put under pressure to develop 'standard operating procedures' for processing policy. This has led to a number of changes in policy making processes in recent years, including: adopting minimum standards of consultation; the impact assessment of all major policy proposals; and the earlier publication of its work programmes.The focus of EU environmental policy making has also changed in recent years concentrating more on updating existing policies than on building-up the EU's role in environmental policy. In the 1970s and 1980s EU environmental policy was marked by the rapid build-up of a body of legislation that covered a range of issues previously not dealt with at EU level. Since the 1980s, other new issues have been taken up but in addition an increasing proportion of the environmental agenda has been taken up by debates on the revision of existing legislation. As a result, the proportion of EU environmental legislation that amends previous laws has steadily increased over time. Consequently, for most environmental issues, the key question is no longer: 'should the EU be involved?’ but 'what should the EU be doing?’ And the logic for getting the issue on the EU political agenda is no longer to make the EU take it up but to change existing policies. This change in both the stakes of and the key struggle in agenda setting strategies, marks a shift from 'new issues' to 'ongoing or recurring concerns'.
In its policy making processes the EU has made a sizeable effort to undertake a particular type of policy coordination, namely the integration of environmental considerations into the operation of all policy sectors. The potential of environmental policy integration is undoubtedly ambitious: economically powerful sectors such as agriculture, energy and transport should 'design out' environmental problems in the development of their own policies. However, it has proven much harder to implement than many had originally expected, not least those working in the European Commission's environment directorate-general. A significant causal factor here has been the EU's fragmented institutional and political structure, which on the one hand has facilitated the adoption of visionary policy objectives, but has also undermined their implementation.
Implementation is very much at the 'sharp end' of the EU policy process. The success of EU policies – and with them the whole integration project – are often judged by the impacts they have on the ground. If, however, the acquis is not fully implemented, EU policies risk becoming paper exercises with little tangible effect on environmental quality but serious distorting impacts on the Single Market. The implementation of policy in the EU is widely regarded as being problematic. Yet, both public and academic understanding of this crucial stage of the EU policy process remains relatively limited. Indeed, for a long time, a number of factors kept the whole issue of poor implementation down or off the political agenda, but today it is much more politicised, pushed along by the campaigning activities of NGOs and pro-integration actors such as the European Parliament. A whole host of solutions to the EU's implementation problems have been offered, some of which could, if deployed, even compound the problem. But in many respects, the causes of poor implementation reside in the very structure of the EU. Consequently, there are likely to be no panaceas.
To develop new environmental policies, it is important first to evaluate those that have already been adopted. However, this intuitively simple idea is difficult to apply in practice, no more so than in the EU where the complex system of multi-level governance adds considerably to the practical difficulty of evaluating policies. Assessing impacts and finding side-effects of policies is best achieved by a plurality of data, methods, analysts and theories, as well as evaluation criteria. In recent years the demand for evaluations of EU policies and programmes has increased as the importance of evaluation has become more widely recognised. Many actors have become involved in commissioning, producing and using evaluations, but the role of evaluation is often still quite weak.
Synergic to the environmental policy in Europe is the European environmental research and innovation policy. It aims at defining and implementing a transformative agenda to greening the economy and the society as a whole so to achieve a truly sustainable development.