Environmental protection high on IGC agenda

Date: 30/05/1996

By Rory Watson

PROTECTION of the environment is one of the very few EU policy areas to feature on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference - a clear measure of the political importance the issue commands with many Union governments.

If the IGC negotiators were ever in any doubt about the scope of the task ahead as they set about rewriting the Maastricht Treaty, they needed only to look to the clear guidelines laid down by EU leaders at their March summit in Turin.

“The IGC will have to consider how to make environmental protection more effective and coherent at the level of the Union, with a view to sustainable development,” declared the summiteers, who stressed that a better environment was “a fundamental challenge for the Union” and underlined that a healthy and sustainable environment was of great concern to Europe's citizens.

Just as with employment policy, it is the Union's Nordic members who are leading the campaign to give added weight to environmental considerations in Union policy-making.

But other governments also see value in a strategy which responds directly to public concerns and illustrates how members states can cooperate to tackle transnational problems.

There are, however, clear divisions between EU countries over the importance which should be attached to the environment in the IGC talks.

In its opening presentation, the UK makes just two references to 'green' protection. It is used to boost London's traditional attack on the

Common Agricultural Policy by confirming British support for a market-driven CAP which “meets environmental and rural policy goals”, but is also criticised as a potential Trojan horse which the UK fears may be used to introduce EU-wide fiscal measures. In stark contrast, Denmark devotes almost 15&percent; of its eight-page IGC report to the environment.

Although France and Germany veer more towards the UK end of the spectrum, a majority of member states support a strengthening of the EU's green commitment. They also believe that after the first round of talks, the wind is in their sails. “On one level, things are going in a favourable direction. We may not have uniformity after the first round, but we are very close to it,” claims one senior Scandinavian official.

IGC group chairman Silvio Fagiolo tends to agree. Summing up the state of play in the negotiations to date, he has said there is broad support for introducing the concept of “sustainable development” into the Union's basic policy objectives as set out in Article 2 of the treaty.

There are also increasing calls for a strengthening of the existing commitment to “respecting the environment” by replacing it with a pledge to promote the “preservation, protection and improvement of the quality of the environment”.

Critics will dismiss such re-wording as cosmetic 'window-dressing', long on pious hopes but short on real impact. For others, however, it will be confirmation of the gradual shift in EU priorities.

The green lobby is pushing for concrete changes to the Maastricht Treaty to make it easier to implement particular environmental objectives and influence other policies.

Treaty articles dealing with agriculture, transport and Trans-European Networks are all likely to be amended to ensure that future policy decisions specifically take account of the “need to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment”.

A majority of governments also favours giving a higher priority to the principle of taking environmental factors into account in the formulation of all EU policies - a broad horizontal approach which currently applies only to assessing the employment and health impact of proposed measures.

But early IGC negotiations have revealed a clear difference of approach between northern and southern member states over the right of countries to apply environmental rules which are stricter than Union standards. This issue was one of the key sticking points in the last round of enlargement discussions and was only resolved by allowing Sweden, Finland and Austria to continue applying their tougher legislation for up to four years.

Already MEPs from the new member states have raised fears that these might have to be relaxed if the Union fails to elevate its own standards, although the current treaty specifically allows for tougher national rules.

IGC negotiators now face the choice of restricting or extending this so-called 'environmental guarantee'. Germany, Denmark and the new member states believe it should remain and, if necessary, be reinforced. But they face opposition from the Mediterranean camp, which fears such arguments could be used as a form of protectionism to shield domestic producers and disrupt the internal market.

The other major decision facing the IGC is whether to extend qualified majority voting (QMV) to areas where policy-making is currently subject to unanimity. Subjects which have been mooted for decision-making by QMV include taxation, measures affecting land use and town and country planning, and environmental aspects of energy policy - but all are politically highly-sensitive and redolent with overtones of subsidiarity.

The difficulty of extending majority voting is illustrated by the fact that even the most environmentally-conscious member states do not see eye to eye on the issue. Denmark, for example, would like it to apply to taxation policy, but Sweden and Finland are opposed to such a move.