Environmental policy integration. Greening sectoral policies in Europe

Book abstract:

As the European Union begins to make more of a political commitment to protecting environmental concerns in a wide range of policy areas, this publication traces the issue of environment policy integration (EPI) over the last quarter of century since the European Community's first Environmental Action Programme was established.

Based on the Third Environmental Summer School of the Robert Schuman Centre held in 1998, the book brings together a variety of contributions from young scholars in the environmental field that explore the problems that have hampered the inclusion of environmental concerns across other Community policies and identify possible solutions.

Having identified that the degree of policy integration varies from country to country, the first part of the book, which follows a detailed explanation of the principles of EPI and its relation to sustainable development, provides case studies of EPI in three EU Member States: the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.

On the basis that the level of EPI also ranges from policy area to policy area, the second part of the book offers five case studies of particular European Policy areas. The Common Agricultural Policy is the first of these to come under the spotlight and this is followed by an analysis of EPI in two different aspects of EU transport policy: environmental taxation for heavy goods vehicles and freight transport across the Alps. Discussions of the greening of European energy policy and the EU's regional and cohesion funds complete this section.

The concluding chapter of the book reinforces the argument illustrated in the nine case studies that economic activities and the state of the environment are interconnected and that therefore environmental policy should not be should not be managed in isolation from other policy areas. Based on these conclusions, the book's editor puts forward a number of possible reforms and Community initiatives that may be taken to ensure the 'greening' of all EU policies.

This book is intended for all those studying or working on environmental and other sectoral policies.

Andrea Lenschow is a lecturer in political science at the University of Salzburg and formerly a Jean Monnet fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.