EU struggles to find right shade of green

Date: 30/05/1996

By Michael Mann

EVERYBODY wants to help improve Europe's environment - or so they would have you believe.

But there can be few policy areas where perceptions of the gravity of the challenges facing the EU vary more widely.

National governments all over the Union assure their domestic audiences that it is they who lead the way in striving for a more sustainable future. But few dispute that the addition of a stronger Nordic element to the EU since 1995 has given environmental policy the biggest single boost it has received for many years.

EU leaders' desire to appeal to public opinion means that the environment is one of the few policy issues which actually features formally on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference.

However, whether enhanced treaty commitments to the environment will necessarily equate to genuine improvements in Europe's ecology is another question.

The last few years have been a frustrating period for those keeping a weather eye on the long list of proposals the European Commission has promised to bring forward.

Much of this has been put down to staffing shortfalls and the time needed for public consultation. Less generous onlookers blame the Environment Commissioner for having her own personal agenda and recruiting an inexperienced team of advisers.

In Denmark's Ritt Bjerregaard, Directorate-General XI (responsible for environmental policy) undoubtedly has a high profile Commissioner. But following numerous controversies - not least the infamous diary incident - many feel she has a high profile for the wrong reasons.

Bjerregaard at least showed her 'green' credentials last year by mounting what was generally regarded as a solo effort to prevent France from going ahead with a final series of nuclear tests on the atolls of the South Pacific.

That the Commission ultimately backed down from conflict with a new French president determined to mark out his territory illustrates the confines within which the EU's executive is operating.

Where Bjerregaard is looking to take positive action is in the enforcement of Union environmental legislation, traditionally the sector's Achilles heel. The last annual report on the implementation of environmental law showed that Italy, for example, had only transposed 75&percent; of EU directives on to its statute books.

Included in the options the Commission will consider in a report this autumn will be better access to national courts for individuals concerned that their local environment is under threat, an European environment inspectorate and the possibility of a Union ombudsman in every member state.

Among the EU's institutions, the highly vocal European Parliament remains the public's environmental conscience. Since Maastricht, it has enjoyed enhanced responsibility in the decision-making process.

Even now, MEPs are engrossed in a conciliation dispute with member states over the future of the Trans-European Networks - with the environmental aspects of these flagship infrastructure projects one of the central sticking points.

The Parliament's environment committee, under the chairmanship of Socialist member Ken Collins, maintains one of the highest profiles in the Parliament and MEPs claim credit for forcing a number of environmental questions on to the EU agenda.

For its part, the business community has long since realised that playing the green card is a certain winner with consumers who want reassurance about the ecologically-friendly credentials of the products they buy.

Still struggling to strip away some of the layers of regulation that EU industry claims are preventing it from holding its own with competitors in the global market-place, EU companies quietly welcome the recent move away from a regulatory approach.

But the countless environmental lobbies active in Brussels accuse the Commission of merely playing lip-service to something of crucial importance to the health and safety of every one of the Union's 370 million citizens.

The move towards a more voluntary approach - the Commission is currently preparing a paper examining how voluntary arrangements can best be used - has worried the green lobby, which claims it is naïve to expect industry voluntarily to take on board any constraints beyond those absolutely required of it. They maintain that voluntary eco-labelling arrangements represent an open invitation to business to sell “environmentally-friendly” products with no real evidence of their ecological benefits.

For industry, allowing member states leeway for national measures within EU framework legislation presents a different problem. Business leaders repeatedly stress the need to ensure that 'green levies' on items such as food packaging do not become barriers to goods from other member states.

Most worrying of all for environmental lobbyists and most pleasing for European industrialists striving to survive in a tougher world market is a deliberate move within DGXI to educate its officials in the ways and concerns of industry.

This may in future reduce the regular inter-service disagreements on policy formulation. But green campaigners believe they are already seeing signs of a “lowest common denominator” approach to environmental policy-making.

Long-awaited proposals on emission standards for cars are expected to insist on much less stringent norms than an earlier draft welcomed by green groups in December last year. A reappraisal of EU water policy has been condemned for failing to replace existing measures with adequate rules to ensure minimum standards.

But the difficulties associated with efforts to agree tough EU-wide legal instruments to control environmental damage suggest the Commission may have decided that a pragmatic approach may be the most realistic option.

Efforts to persuade EU finance ministers to accept some sort of carbon tax are unlikely to be agreed as long as fiscal policies require unanimous support. Likewise, a European liability scheme to put the 'polluter pays' principle into practice remains the subject of heated debate.

All is not doom and gloom, however, for those trying to force the pace of environmental protection. They are encouraged by the Commission's commitment to increasing the importance given to the environment in the allocation of money under the Cohesion Funds.

But the worst fears of the green movement seem to be illustrated by the recent review of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme, widely condemned for lacking any firm commitments to achieve the aim of moving “towards sustainability” by the start of the next millennium.

Success in reaching targets will depend largely on DGXI's ability to lend an environmental edge to the work of other departments, such as DGVI (agriculture), which has been used to ploughing its own furrow on environmental policy over the last 40 years.

The duties facing the EU in the environmental field extend well beyond its own boundaries. It is also committed to fulfilling the many commitments arising out of a spate of international conventions finalised over the past decade, not least the undertakings on climate change and biodiversity agreed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the Montreal Protocol to halve production of ozone-depleting CFCs by 2000 and the recent decision to halt hazardous waste exports to developing countries.

In the era of the World Trade Organisation, the Commission has also begun moves to bring some logic into the apparent dichotomy between growing free trade and a need for tighter environmental protection.

But perhaps the greatest single challenge facing the Union in its external relations is how to bring the often catastrophic environmental situation in the applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) into line with EU standards in time for them to join the Union early next century.

Some estimates put the cost of cleaning up the CEECs at up to 300 billion ecu over the next 15 years. But things will become clearer when the Commission processes the questionnaires it sent out to would-be members earlier this month to gauge their approximation to EU standards.

The extent of Union concern is perhaps best illustrated by its anxiety to ensure the closure, as soon as possible, of a number of Soviet-built nuclear power plants all over Eastern Europe.