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Recent Developments in Environmental Law
... Recent directives on integrated pollution-prevention control and water quality bear the strong imprint of subsidiarity, and may signal the start of a trend towards more flexible (that is, less harmonised) standard setting, with states tailoring controls to local circumstances. There arc, of course, some in the Commission who rue the decision to abandon the principle of regulatory harmonisation (for example, seeKramer, 1997). But as I explain in my paper (1999a), in the past the legislative reflex within DG XI has militated against a full consideration of alternative policy tools, and diverted attention from pressing problems such as implementation and enforcement. ...
... Recent directives on integrated pollution-prevention control and water quality bear the strong imprint of subsidiarity, and may signal the start of a trend towards more flexible (that is, less harmonised) standard setting, with states tailoring controls to local circumstances. There arc, of course, some in the Commission who rue the decision to abandon the principle of regulatory harmonisation (for example, see Kramer, 1997). But as I explain in my paper (1999a), in the past the legislative reflex within DG XI has militated against a full consideration of alternative policy tools, and diverted attention from pressing problems such as implementation and enforcement. ...
At its founding in 1957, the European Union (EU) had no environmentalpolicy, no environmental bureaucracy, and no environmental laws. When,in 1973, the EU began systematically to address environmental concernsthere was little expectation that the environment would develop into oneof the largest areas of common activity. Twenty-five years on, the EUhas some of the most progressive environmental policies of any state inthe world although it is not itself a state. At the same time, the preexisting environmental policies of the member states have undergone a progressivechange through their involvement in EU environmental policymaking. Inother words, the member states have created an institutional entity toperform certain tasks which has in turn deeply affected the way they themselves perceive and act against environmental problems. This theme issue of Government and Policy offers a retrospective analysis of these developments. The purpose of this introductory essay is to describe the historical evolution of EU environmental policy and to identify themost salient themes.
In institutional terms, the European Union (EU) is considerably 'thicker' than it was thirty years ago, with many new layers of decision-making procedure and myriad new actors, including almost twice as many member states. Conventional wisdom suggests that policy systems, in which policy development depends upon securing agreement among a concurrent majority of actors, are generally slow and collectively sub-optimal. However, a longitudinal analysis of the time taken to adopt environmental proposals in the period 1967-97 reveals that the policy process has become slightly faster not slower. This is despite an enormous growth in the scope and ambitiousness of the environmental acquis and a significant increase in the number of actors involved. The obvious conclusion is that actors have become steadily more effective at achieving consensus. These empirical findings are analysed against a number of predictions derived from macro- and middle-range theories of the EU.
This chapter deals with the application of economic theories of criminal law to environmental pollution. The chapter starts by addressing why environmental pollution needs to be enforced at all by using the criminal law. Attention is also paid to the question whether in certain circumstances administrative rather than criminal law could be used to enforce environmental regulation. Optimal sanctions for environmental crime are discussed as well as problems arising in case of corporate environmental crime. The effectiveness of environmental criminal law is generally addressed as well as the consequences of various possible enforcement strategies.
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