Selbstverpflichtungen im Bereich des Umweltschutzes

Voluntary agreements occur quite frequently in the economy. Of particular interest are those, which are the result of informal agreements between industrial associations and the government. A major part of them refers to environmental protection. In the relevant literature they are largely ignored, however.From a theoretical point of view, voluntary agreements frequently are ineffective and inefficient. And from a political standpoint, they promptly turn out to be anticompetitive and a breach of the economic order.These analyses suffer from simplified, inappropriate premises, however. In a more realistic perspective, there is a better evaluation of voluntary agreements. That is valid particularly for the criterion of „effectiveness“, to some extent for the criterion of „efficiency“, but less for the criterion of „competitive requirements“ and hardly at all for the criterion of „conformity with the economic order“.Voluntary agreements should be considered, generally, as a supplement and not as a substitution of a market-oriented economic policy. Finally, it is to be taken into account that they will lose their contemporary importance in the field of climate protection in the medium or long run because of the planned European emissions trading system.