13. Environmental Policy

Author(s):  
Andrea Lenschow

This chapter focuses on the European Union’s environmental policy, the development of which was characterized by institutional deepening and the substantial expansion of environmental issues covered by EU decisions and regulations. Environmental policy presents a host of challenges for policy-makers, including the choice of appropriate instruments, improvement of implementation performance, and better policy coordination at all levels of policy-making. The chapter points to the continuing adaptations that have been made in these areas. It first considers the historical evolution of environmental policy in the EU before discussing the main actors in EU environmental policy-making, namely: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and environmental interest groups. The chapter also looks at the EU as an international actor.

Author(s):  
Andrea Lenschow

This chapter focuses on the European Union’s environmental policy, the development of which was characterized by institutional deepening and the substantial expansion of environmental issues covered by EU decisions and regulations. Environmental policy presents a host of challenges for policymakers, including the choice of appropriate instruments, improvement of implementation performance, and better policy coordination at all levels of policy-making. The chapter points to the continuing adaptations that have been made in these areas. It first considers the historical evolution of environmental policy in the EU before discussing the main actors in EU environmental policy-making, namely: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and environmental interest groups. The chapter also looks at the EU as an international actor.


Policy-Making in the European Union explores the link between the modes and mechanisms of EU policy-making and its implementation at the national level. From defining the processes, institutions and modes through which policy-making operates, the text moves on to situate individual policies within these modes, detail their content, and analyse how they are implemented, navigating policy in all its complexities. The first part of the text examines processes, institutions, and the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of policy-making, while the second part considers a wide range of policy areas, from economics to the environment, and security to the single market. Throughout the text, theoretical approaches sit side by side with the reality of key events in the EU, including enlargement, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the financial crisis and resulting Eurozone crisis, focusing on what determines how policies are made and implemented. This includes major developments such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and new initiatives to promote EU energy security. In the final part, the chapters consider trends in EU policy-making and the challenges facing the EU.


Author(s):  
Maljean-Dubois Sandrine

This chapter addresses the European Union (EU) as a preeminent example of a regional organization and its role in international environmental law. It first examines the progressive affirmation of EU competence in the environmental field and its development of a distinctive environmental policy. The chapter then turns to the external dimension of EU environmental competence, discussing the EU's participation in and enforcement of international environmental law, as well as the general question of whether the EU can be said to have an external environmental policy. The EU internal environmental policy expands on the international stage. Even if it lacks the internal structures and resources fully and effectively to assume a role as a global environmental leader, the EU participates in environmental negotiations, concludes and implements international treaties, and exercises its ‘soft power’ to promote the development and implementation of international environmental law. The chapter concludes with some brief reflections on other regional organizations and their distinctions from the largely sui generis EU example.


2019 ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Rainer Eising

This chapter examines the role of interest groups in European Union (EU) politics. It also considers the way in which the EU institutions influence interest group structures and activities. The chapter begins with an overview of the relationship between the EU institutions and interest groups and examines the steps taken thus far to regulate that relationship. It then looks at the evolution and the structure of the interest group system, focusing in particular on two salient aspects: the difference between national and EU organizations; and the difference between specific and diffuse interests.


Author(s):  
Ralf Drachenberg ◽  
Alex Brianson

This chapter examines the process of policy-making in the European Union. It first considers how the EU originally made policy decisions before tracing the evolution of the formal balance between the EU institutions over time, with particular emphasis on the increasing legislative power of the European Parliament. It then describes the Community method, which remains the core of the EU policy process but is now complemented with a range of ‘new governance tools’ designed to produce coordinated member state action through iterated processes of standard-setting, best practice identification, and knowledge transfer. One of these processes is the open method of coordination (OMC). The chapter concludes with an analysis of the implementation of EU policy decisions by and in the member states, along with current trends in EU decision-making after the EU enlargements of the 2000s and the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.


2020 ◽  
pp. 239965442096523
Author(s):  
Thomas Borén ◽  
Patrycja Grzyś ◽  
Craig Young

This paper develops perspectives which seek to spatialize authoritarian neoliberalism through arguing for greater engagement with the politics of urban cultural policy formation in the neglected context of post-socialist East and Central Europe. Through analyzing the politics of urban cultural policy-making in Gdańsk, Poland, the paper spatializes authoritarian neoliberalism by exploring how relations between the urban and the national, and between the urban and the supranational, shape urban cultural policy, drawing upon literatures on political economy, policy mobilities, cultural policy research, and the concepts of authoritarian neoliberalism and the relational-territorial nexus. Gdańsk is a liberally run city, strongly aligned with the European Union (EU), opposed to the authoritarian neoliberal national level politics in Poland. The paper analyses urban-national tensions and relationships between Gdańsk and the EU to unpack the contested spatial nature of authoritarian neoliberalism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 096977642097061
Author(s):  
George Petrakos ◽  
Alexandra Sotiriou

Almost 30 years since the Maastricht Treaty and 20 years since the introduction of the euro, it is clear that the European Union (EU) has lost its appeal to wider constituencies and citizen groups that realize that the promises for convergence and prosperity have not been delivered. Rising dissatisfaction and Euroscepticism (expressed both in the ballot box and in Eurobarometer reports) is evident even in traditional pro-EU countries of the European core. As this long decade comes to an end, incidents (or accidents) like these ones, either in the form of open discontent, or in the form of rising populism, will exert pressure on the EU policy agenda that will either increase the frequency of deadlocks and inefficiency in policy making or will eventually lead to an honest effort to address the roots of these phenomena. This paper examines the drivers behind these two incidents (and the ones that may follow) and the limits of the current market and policy integration arrangements in the EU, arguing that a new policy agenda addressing the real weaknesses of the Union is inevitable if disintegration is to be avoided. Luckily enough, some elements of this new policy agenda may already be here.


Author(s):  
Dirk T.G. Rübbelke ◽  
Eytan Sheshinski

SummaryIn 2004, there was a further enlargement of the European Union. Among the new member countries are eight Central and Eastern European countries. Especially the accession countries located directly at the border to the EU generate significant environmental spillovers harming the Union. These spillovers are mitigated but not deleted by the enlargement regulations.In this paper we will therefore analyze an instrument which may further diminish the spillover problems: transfers, which are conditional on a tightening of environmental policy in the accession countries. The environmental policy considered is the policy of environmental taxation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zofia Wysokińska

This paper analyses the evolution of the new environmental policy of the European Union in the context of the efforts undertaken to moderate the negative effects of climate change. It describes all the activities in the European Union designed to implement new tools of the EU environmental policy, such as low carbon economy technologies, tools that improve the efficiency of managing the limited natural resources, the environmentally friendly transport package, etc. All of them are aimed at laying the foundations of the circular economy, which may also be referred to as a closed-loop economy, i.e., an economy that does not generate excessive waste and whereby any waste becomes a resource.


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