Officials battle to clear log-jam in ‘green’ legislation

Date: 19/09/1996

MORE than ever before, patience is the principal characteristic required of anyone waiting for proposals to emerge from the bowels of the Commission's Directorate-General XI, responsible for environmental policy.

A quick glance at the work programme for the next few months shows just how serious the backlog has become.

Much of the work in progress involves central pillars of the Union's environmental strategy, including papers on green taxes, environmental liability and improving the implementation of existing laws.

Yet there is a growing impression that in spite of clear treaty commitments to 'greening' all areas of EU policy, the environment has been left behind amid the current obsession with the creation of employment and competitiveness.

“The profile of the current Commission is completely different from that of its predecessor. The president's advisers are not as focused on the environment as Jacques Delors' people were and that spills down through the whole bureaucracy,” says a frustrated member state official, waiting for the flood of papers which never arrives.

In mitigation, Commission officials point out that the difference in circumstances between now and 1992 could hardly be greater. Back then, the world was full of post-Rio environmental fervour. Today, the Commission is obsessed with the twin goals of cutting disastrous jobless figures and giving substance to the great buzz-word of competitiveness.

“In the run-up to the end of the Intergovernmental Conference, the Commission just wants to get the internal market polished off and clearly favours the industrial lobby. DGIII (industry) and DGXV (internal market) can assert themselves much more,” claims a Greenpeace official, who adds: “As far as we are concerned, unemployment is just an excuse. Environmental policies offer plenty of job-creating opportunities.”

But an overriding impression remains that Commission President Jacques Santer's motto of “doing less but better” is rubbing off on the amount of work coming out of DGXI.

Personalities are often picked out as a major influence on the priority each area receives in the scheme of EU policy-making.

A commonly-held view in the corridors of Brussels is that Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard has been keeping a determinedly low profile since bringing the wrath of her boss down on her head over the plan to publish her diaries late last year.

“She did not endear herself to her colleagues and does not want to push them too hard for support because of her loss of credibility,” says one Bjerregaard-watcher.

New to the Commission last year, the Environment Commissioner has crossed swords regularly with some of the more established of her colleagues, not least Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann and Trade Commissioner

Sir Leon Brittan. More often than not, their views have prevailed.

Shortly before the summer break, Luxembourg was warned that its planned eco-tax on drinks packaging could breach single market rules.

DGXI had argued that the measure could be justified on environmental grounds, prompting industry sources to describe the official warning delivered by the Commission as “a major victory for the Bangemann Cabinet”.

Perhaps the most eagerly-awaited proposal to emerge recently from the Commission was the plan to reduce emissions from cars following the so-called Auto-Oil Programme.

Controversially, the proposals which finally appeared were considerably weaker in several respects than a draft document leaked in December. For most observers, this was the result of a highly successful piece of lobbying by the car industry association ACEA.

Increasingly, 'green' groups find their efforts overshadowed by what Tony Long of the World Wide Fund for Nature describes as “ferocious lobbying from commercial interests”, whom, he believes, have the ear of both Bangemann and Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti.

One example of this, he says, is the Commission's long-awaited paper suggesting a framework for green taxes - the communication on “economic incentives and disincentives”.

A fourth draft has now scraped through the usual inter-service consultations, but has run into trouble with other Commissioners' Cabinets. DGXI has taken the unusual step of establishing a working party with DGXV to attempt to thrash out their differences.

Industry is evidently anxious to influence the debate and officials are aware of the pressure they are under.

Even when legislation has worked its way into the public domain, the pressures on the environment directorate-general are manifest. Bjerregaard fought a solo campaign to force the labelling of genetically-modified agricultural seed, but was overruled by her colleagues amid fears of sparking a major trade dispute with the US.

Efforts to enforce the ban on imports of furs caught using “inhumane” traps have been stymied by similar international trade concerns, with Brittan warning of the clear danger of a World Trade Organisation dispute panel.

Even some Commissioners who could be expected to back Bjerregaard have fallen short of expectations. The Austrian non-governmental organisation, Global 2000, is frustrated by what it sees as the ability of Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler to paint himself as a guardian of the Union's environment while taking a very different stance in the Commission.

Long believes DGXI has now lost its status as an engine of legislative progress in its own right.

“The environment has been the big victim of subsidiarity. We are not criticising the move to subsidiarity, but it seems to have caused a loss of confidence and direction in DGXI,” he says.

DGXI is committed to extending the concept of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) to strategic planning decisions but, in these days of subsidiarity, seems unlikely to make much progress on a proposal which was originally thrown out in the early 1990s.

As with the green tax issue, attempts to draw up guidelines for voluntary environmental agreements with industry have run into difficulties with the competition elements of the treaty during their journey around the Commission.

But the very philosophy behind the plan illustrates one of the major headaches the Commission faces. “At EU level, is it actually possible to pin down a limited number of actors with whom to negotiate?” asks an official.

In an area as emotive as the environment, there are those who suggest that Commission efforts to consult the widest range of interests merely muddy the waters and delay the preparation of legislation almost indefinitely.

Plans to establish an EU-wide liability scheme to force industry to respect the much-vaunted 'polluter pays principle' seem guaranteed to run into opposition even from the more progressive member states. What started as a legislative proposal will now limit itself to a White Paper, fulfilling the twin goals of showing that the Commission wants to do something, while stopping short of annoying EU governments.

Member state officials believe part of the problem is that much of what is on the Commission's agenda goes to the very core of environmental policy.

Those with most to fear from tighter standards fight especially hard against fundamental measures which are certain to affect industry across the board.

But amid all the gloom, a few rays of hope remain. Elsewhere in the Commission, the greening process seems to have been picked up - at least to a limited extent - by Regional Policy Commissioner Monika Wulf-Mathies and Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock.

In addition, the European Parliament's environment committee can be guaranteed to take a more radical line than that coming from the Council of Ministers, and can make a difference in these days of co-decision.

Long is also encouraged by the Parliament's initiative in inviting Commissioners including Fischler, Kinnock and Energy Commissioner Christos Papoutsis to a series of “Congressional-style hearings” on the greening of the EU's budget.

However, the current debate on the water framework directive underlines the problem the Parliament faces. If it pushes for a 'programme', it will have greater influence in drawing up the text, but this will be less legally-binding than a directive, where member states call the shots.

And despite these glints of sunlight, the environment seems destined - for the moment at least - to take a back seat to matters of more pressing political urgency.