The Politics of the European Environment Policy

An attempt is made to isolate the political dimension in European environmental policy. This dimension is additional to purely environmental and socio-economic considerations in the election of specific environmental objectives and instruments. Given the vague and complex nature of most environmental problems, the 'environment' is easily deployed as a vehicle for transferring power from the national to the European level. It is concluded that environmental policy is likely to emerge from Brussels when three of the four main EC/EU institutions succeed in making 'the environment' serve the primary goal of political integration. As this invariably means taking legislative and administrative powers away from national institutions, opposition to political integration sought on environmental grounds appears to be growing. The non-uniform nature of both environmental problems and of the socio-economic-political impacts of EC regulation is being recognised.