Mäkilä, Katri

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ABSTRACTSubject International Business Date 17.4.2007Student numberAuthor Katri MäkiläNumber of pages 85Title Green and Competitive EU? From Rhetoric to Implementation.Supervisors Ph.D. Esa StenbergM.Sc. Valtteri KaartemoAbstractThere has been a lot of discussion lately about whether or not environmental aspirations can bereconciled with those of economic competitiveness in a satisfactory manner. The purpose of thisstudy is to make a contribution to this discourse by assessing how successful the European Unionhas been in combining these two very different kinds of goals, both at strategic and implementationlevels. The three sub objectives derived from this overall purpose are: to evaluate the EU’scontribution to the promotion of environmental sustainability from a global perspective, to assessthe strategic choices the Union has made when trying to combine the goals of environmentalsustainability and economic competitiveness, and finally, to estimate the success of theimplementation of these strategies on an individual member state level.The theoretical framework of this study begins with definitions of the two key concepts from theviewpoint of this study: sustainable development and economic competitiveness. Furthermore, ashort introduction is given to the policy tools that the European Union has put in place in order tofacilitate the task of environmental integration.Due to the nature of the purpose of this study, the research approach is qualitative. Morespecifically, the study is carried out by conducting five (5) partly structured, theme-based expertinterviews. In order to form a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon, representatives from allthe relevant interest groups from the perspective of this thesis (i.e. government, private sector andnon-governmental organisations) are interviewed.The research findings suggest that, first of all, in order to achieve environmental integration, theEU needs to increase the role of cooperation with other parts of the world. Other implications of thisstudy indicate that the roles of strategic and legislative frameworks within the EU should bestreamlined and more attention should be paid to overall policy coordination. Furthermore, it isdiscovered in this study that the so-called best practices cannot be directly transferred from onemember state to another, but they can serve as inspiring examples among the member states.Key words European Union, sustainable development, environment, competitiveness, economicgrowthFurtherinformationx   Master´s thesis  Licentiate´s thesis  Doctor´s thesis

Green and competitive EU? : from rhetoric to implementation

https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/10024/115013/1/MakilaKatri.pdf

Green and competitive EU? : from rhetoric to implementation

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