European environmental policy

...It also pits environmentalists against industrialists, since pollution abatement is expensive...

...The program designed to respond to projected traffic growth and to help peripheral regions, the Trans-European Networks, is dominated by proposals to build new highways...

...Monetary union, defense cooperation, lifting of border controls, all are opposed by a majority of Europeans...

...The EU is currently not even on course to meet the original target, a return to 1990 emissions levels by the year 2000...

...Countries with high environmental standards, such as Germany and Denmark, feared that they would be forced to lower them to meet single-market obligations...

...In negotiation after negotiation in the 1980s, proposals for higher standards championed by Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark were held up by the opposition of Greece, Spain, and, above all, the United Kingdom (UK...

...Or will those who have always argued that environmental protection and supranational integration are fundamentally incompatible be proved correct...

...However, there are also some grounds for optimism...

...We need, therefore, to refocus the economy away from the inefficient use of resources and waste creation and toward "eco-efficiency" and employment...

...The Single European Market Act pleased the green lobby by writing the environment into the treaty for the first time...

...There are exemptions for issues such as environmental taxes, energy policy, and land-use planning, but this still leaves scope for serious political controversy on matters like air quality standards or drinking water quality...

...Yet many environmentalists, particularly "deep greens" or fundamentalists, remain opposed to the whole notion of supranational integration...

...Much of this is a conventional analysis of economic difficulties and challenges, but toward the end of the paper comes a wide-ranging and potentially revolutionary discussion of the nature of economic activity in Europe and the need for "a new development model...

...The inclusion of Sweden, Austria, and Finland, which joined at the beginning of this year, has already strengthened the hand of the pro-environment group within the Council...

...In these confrontations, environmentalists generally lose...

...But nothing so far proposed matches up to the scale of the challenge...

...In one famous case, Denmark was allowed to maintain a ban on non-returnable bottles, even though this disadvantaged non-Danish companies...

...But its role will certainly evolve, and could well come to include an enforcement element...

...Thus, when acid rain became an issue of public concern in the 1980s, the response of the EU was not to implement energy efficiency policies, but to set emissions standards for power stations that required the fitting of pollution abatement equipment...

...Britain opposes a Europe-wide scheme, and wants a less strict approach, but may be outvoted when legislation comes before the European Council of Ministers...

...There are now attempts to mitigate the impact, for example, by declaring some sensitive areas special environmental zones...

...This desire to find technological fixes is, in the eyes of many environmentalists, an excuse to avoid confronting the more fundamental issues of lifestyle and consumption patterns...

...The paper observes that our economies "over-consume nature and under-consume people" and that the "substitution of labor by capital has been accompanied by a continued increase in the use of energy and raw materials, leading to an over-exploitation of environmental resources...

...This will remove the incentive to over-produce, and cut the pressure to farm over-intensively...

...To understand this paradox, one has to go back to the origins of the European project...

...The victory of Jacques Chirac in the French presidential elections has added to the pessimism of environmentalists...

...A number of European countries want to introduce a Europe-wide strict liability regime, with many similarities to the "Superfund" arrangements...

...This is perhaps the ultimate test of the EU's environmental credentials...

...The British government has suggested that the agency should oversee the activities of national pollution inspectorates, to ensure that environmental legislation is properly implemented...

...Nothing could do more to restore Europe's rural habitats...

...A policy based on price support cannot possibly be extended to an agrarian society such as Poland without a massive increase in the EU's agricultural budget and that, fortunately, is not a practical proposition...

...The answers are as unclear as the air over Europe...

...Even this is likely to increase public concern and pressure for action...

...Far more significantly, however, the act set up the institutional arrangements to facilitate the creation of the single market by abolishing all non-tariff barriers to trade within the EU...

...Surprisingly, when it came to the final negotiation all countries agreed, including the UK, which may have seen this as a concession worth making to secure its opt-out from new arrangements for social and employment policy...

...The incorporation of Eastern Europe will help in a different way, primarily because it will precipitate the final collapse of the Common Agricultural Policy...

...If Europe is to avoid a major international embarrassment, it will need to adopt a coherent strategy on climate change, emphasizing energy conservation and improved efficiency...

...Only in the mid-1980s, with the signing of the Single European Market Act, was the environment given formal status as a matter for concern at the European level...

...A third cause for optimism is the increasing pressure on Europe from international environmental agreements, in particular the Convention on Climate Change, signed at the Rio Summit in 1992...

...Such fears have been allayed by rulings by the European Court of Justice (the EU's Supreme Court) upholding the view that states have a right to set environmental standards higher than those agreed upon within the EU, as long as these are aimed genuinely at protecting the environment...

...When this failed, they fell back on a more indirect, incrementalist approach: creating economic links and emphasizing the material selfinterest to be derived from cooperation...

...European transport policy remains rooted in the 1960s, when the emphasis was entirely on building new roads...

...Above this rosy scenario, however, hangs an ugly cloud...

...When air quality became an issue, the response was not to alter transport policies, but to move to require the fitting of catalytic converters (which have been mandatory in Europe only since 1993...

...Will it prove possible to reconcile increased trade and movement of goods with environmental protection...

...The burden of taxation should be shifted off labor and onto pollution and waste...

...Jean Monnet and the other "Founding Fathers" hoped to create a United States of Europe through explicitly political means, notably a defense association between France and Germany...

...The reality remains, however, that European economies operate on the basis of "Create wealth first, clean up the mess later...

...Another reason for optimism is the inevitable expansion of the EU into Central and Eastern Europe...

...The CommonAgricultural Policy (CAP) is a classic example of the pattern of creating wealth first and then spending a small proportion of it on remedying the damage...

...His party showed a similar antigreen tendency when, shortly after it won the legislative elections in France, it joined the British government in an assault on European environmental policy, under the broad heading of a drive for deregulation and subsidiarity...

...But nothing is being done to alter the fundamental problem, that the policy gives farmers an incentive to overproduce by guaranteeing a price for their produce...

...By maximizing production, the CAP has lead to intensive farming with devastating effects...

...q FALL • 1995 • 457...

...The Maastricht Treaty also makes explicit the EU's formal commitment to "sustainable growth respecting the environment...

...It was in this context that the European Commission's White Paper Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (known as the Delors White Paper) was published...

...The first follow-up meeting, held in Berlin earlier this year, committed all developed nations to negotiate targets for greenhouse gas reductions after the year 2000...

...Within a decade the need to incorporate Eastern Europe into the EU will lead to the reform of the CAP so that it supports farmers' incomes rather than prices...

...So far the issues that have been decided on majority voting have been relatively uncontentious, but this is a controversy waiting to happen, and it could flair up on the issue of environmental liability...

...Lthe intergovernmental negotiations leading to the Treaty of Maastricht, therefore, a group of countries led by Germany insisted that the national veto over environmental issues should be removed...

...For all its green rhetoric, the EU remains a capitalist club dedicated to the promotion of free trade...

...Chirac has already demonstrated his contempt for them by announcing the resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific...

...By this time, the central pillars of the European integration had already been designed, without taking any account of environmentalism...

...Moreover, when the European Commission proposed a fiscally neutral carbon/energy tax that would have been used to reduce other forms of taxation, the measure was defeated...

...We should not, of course, be carried away with optimism just because of a single white paper, particularly when the main protagonist, Jacques Delors, has now retired...

...This brings the EU into line, at least rhetorically, with the post—Earth Summit discourse about sustainable development...

...The new transport commissioner in Brussels, former Labor party leader Neil Kinnock, has reacted to widespread concern by beginning to emphasize rail networks as well...

...FALL • 1995 • 455 Politics Abroad However, the advanced countries were dissatisfied...

...The Treaty of Maastricht thus extends the operation of majority voting (that is, with no state having a veto) to most environmental legislation...

...In contrast, attempts by Brussels to clean up the air or safeguard the seas are welcomed, partly because it 456 • DISSENT Politics Abroad is clear that the nation-state is too small a unit to tackle such issues, and partly because in much of Europe national governments have been unwilling even to try...

...They wanted not only the right to set their own high standards, but also the ability to raise their neighbors' standards...

...At present it is limited to collecting and disseminating information about the state of the European environment...

...A final reason for hope is the existence of a new institution, the European Environment Agency...

...It is predicted that economic growth resulting from the single European market will lead to a massive expansion of freight travel, and most of it will be carried by road...

...A second problem that environmentalists have with the EU is that it is founded on a belief in the power of technology in general, and nuclear power in particular...

...Yet its negotiating stance at Berlin was progressive, leading the call for post-2000 reductions targets...

...As the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference approaches, and pro-European politicians seek ways to relaunch the integrationist project, environmentalists have a chance to highlight the popularity of green initiatives...

...This would be a significant advance...

...Many advances in environmental protection— in relation to water quality, air pollution, or habitat protection—have come from European Union (EU) legislation...

...Europe's willingness to roll back on environmental policy will surely be restrained by the fact that this is one area in which action by Brussels is popular with electorates...

...The new president of the commission, Jacques Santer, has so far shown little interest in either the environment or a new development model...