Environmental implications of eastern enlargement of the EU

The study deals with the 'Europeanisation' of the candidate countries' national environment policy, focusing on the process of adaptation to EU requirements and on the management of this process by the European Commission.

Using the four Visegrad countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia) as a case study, the paper aims to supplement the existing literature with some preliminary observations on the possible implications of eastern enlargement for EU environmental policy.

Due to the weak domestic base of environmental policy, the Visegrad countries will not be capable of adopting a pro-active approach to environmental policy-making at the EU level when they become full members. Western management of the development of their environmental policy in the 1990s has been successful in terms of establishing EU environmental policy as the ultimate model. Therefore no major changes to this model that would be based on the Visegrad countries' domestic experience are required by environmental policy communities in these countries. Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that an individual Visegrad country may try to export its domestic environmental concepts to the European level. This can happen when the post of the minister of the environment is occupied by a charismatic person promoting an environmental goal that does not contradict other, more important, priorities of his country, concludes the study