Implementing European environmental policy: The impacts of Directives in the Member States

Book abstract:

'Is the European Union overly concerned with policy development and insufficiently concerned with the outcomes of policy?' is the central question posed by this work. The contributors examine this issue through a comparative evaluation of the implementation of three pieces of EU environmental legislation in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

Organised over seven chapters the editor follows his introduction with a chapter on the issue of implementation in the European environmental policy context exploring the division of roles between the EU level and the national level. Chapter three provides a review of the academic literature on policy implementation concentrating upon the disciplines of economics and political sciences.

The three chapters following this constitute the core of the book. Each one is dedicated to a comparative evaluation of one Directive or Regulation in the four countries mentioned and each analysis provides its own insight into the problems arising from policy design, the interaction of other national issues such as compliance costs and the competition posed by other standards regulators (e.g. ISO). The editor concludes with Chapter 7, exploring the potential for introducing more effective implementation procedures. He illustrates the need for and the effectiveness of adaptive implementation in dealing with largely unanticipated policy interactions.

The work will interest students, scholars, policy researchers and practitioners in environmental law, environmental economics, and public policies.

Matthieu Glachant is a Research Fellow at CERNA at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, France and Jean Monnet Fellow in the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute, Italy.