“The European Union: Environmental Policy and Strategies”

The European Union (EU) has been a force for the integration of Europe, while at the same time it has undergone its own internal changes. Borders have disappeared as membership has increased. The EU has been a leader in promoting an environmental agenda with some of the strongest and most innovative environmental protection measures in the world. For example, with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, it agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8% of 1990 levels by 2008-2010. (It had pressed for more stringent reductions but was rebuffed by the U.S.) The European Commission and the European Parliament have been especially concerned about the level of implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation. The following [paper] is a discussion of some of the recent and significant measures being pursued to ensure a high level of environmental protection throughout the European Union. The trend has been to develop initiatives that strengthen implementation of environmental legislation and devise new strategies that will, while recognizing the diversity and sovereignty of the Member States, allow for multiple strategies to meet EU-wide goals

Conflicts and Coalitions Within and Across the ENGO Community

This article examines the diversity of opinions that exists within the ENGO community regarding their diagnoses of environmental problems and their preferred solutions to them. It provides a conceptual framework that consists of two components: values and governance approaches. Different values include ecological sustainability, distributive equity and economic efficiency. Governance approaches target states, international regimes, communities and markets as alternative loci for institutional solutions to environmental problems. The framework is used to illuminate salient patterns of conflict and coalitional behavior and to project future trends in global environmental politics. (c) 2008 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Analysis of EU Directives

While a number of different theoretical models have been advanced to explain why states implement-or, indeed, do not implement-multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), very little empirical work has been undertaken to validate their predictions. With a view to narrowing this gap, the present article adopts a large-N, econometric approach to test the explanatory power of four distinct models of compliance-domestic adjustment, reputational, constructivist and managerial-in the context of European Union (EU) environmental policy. Using data on the number of ofıcial infringements received by 15 member states for non-implementation of environmental directives over the period 1979-2000, we ınd that all four models make a statistically signiıcant contribution to explaining spatio-temporal differences in legal implementation. Thus, our results suggest that the implementation of MEAs is shaped by a combination of rational calculations of domestic compliance costs and reputational damage, domestically institutionalized normative obligations, and legal and political constraints. We conclude by suggesting a greater need for multi-causal theoretical models of supranational legal compliance. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Assessing the Empirical Impact of Environmental Federalism

Many theoretical models analyze the effects of decentralized environmental policymaking. The predictions range from a race to the top, a race to the bottom, or no effect. However, little empirical evidence exists to resolve this ambiguity. This paper fills the void by examining the impact of decentralized environmental policymaking in the U.S. under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. For abatement expenditures, Reagan's decentralization had no discernible impact before the mid-1980s, but by the mid-1980s the data are consistent with decentralization leading to a race to the top. No statistically significant effect is found on nitrogen oxide or sulfur dioxide emissions. Copyright Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 2003

Changing the rules of the game: an analysis of EU influence on electricity and gas liberalization: with a focus on the Baltic Sea Region, and future challenges to EU energy market regulation

This study analyses the expansion of the EU into energy market regulation. It shows that the limits to EU influence and, thereby, EU energy market regulation for the internal energy market, begin where EU influence affects national interests with regard to ensuring energy security. This scientifically established insight bears an important practical implication. The further development of EU energy market regulation as a cornerstone of the internal energy market faces a particular policy challenge: It is necessary to establish a regulatory framework for the internal electricity and gas market, which acknowledges the primacy of national energy security interests. This finding is important in the light of the new and increasing energy policy challenges that some Member States face today, not least as a result of a liberalized energy market. Moreover, in the context of new systemic risks arising from ongoing energy market integration, a politically unstable (in the worst case - collapsing) EU regulatory framework can cause significant social and economic costs for individual Member States. With regard to that, the study points to the increasingly complex policy areas that are made subject to EU integration and calls for more attention to the related regulatory and political risks - also with a view to the current euro crisis. Diese Studie analysiert die Expansion der EU in die Energiemarktregulierung. Sie zeigt, dass die Grenzen des EU Einflusses und damit des EU Regulierungsrahmens für den Energiebinnenmarkt dort beginnen, wo nationale Interessen mit Blick auf die Gewährleistung der Energieversorgungssicherheit tangiert werden. Diese Erkenntnis hat eine wichtige praktische Implikation. Die weitere Ausgestaltung der EU Energiemarktregulierung und damit des Fundaments des Energiebinnenmarktes steht vor einer besonderen politischen Herausforderung: Es gilt einen stabilen gemeinschaftlichen Regulierungsrahmens für den europäischen Strom- und Gasmarkt unter dem Primat nationaler Energiesicherheitsinteressen bereitzustellen. Dies ist von Bedeutung im Lichte wachsender und neuer energiepolitischer Herausforderungen für die einzelnen Mitgliedstaaten, nicht zuletzt als Folge eines liberalisierten Energiemarktes. In Anbetracht neuer systemischer Risiken, die sich aus einem integrierten europäischen Energiemarkt ergeben, kann ein politisch instabiler (im schlimmsten Fall kollabierender) gemeinschaftlicher Regulierungsrahmen für die Mitgliedstaaten hohe soziale und ökonomische Kosten nach sich ziehen. An dieser Stelle verweist die Studie auf die immer komplexeren Integrationsgegenstände der EU und fordert, dass den damit einhergehenden Risiken, regulatorischer und politischer Art, grössere Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken ist - gerade auch mit Blick auf die aktuelle Krise der Gemeinschaftswährung