The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd Edition

Globalisation, trade and the environment

10.2 The European Union: from traditional paradigm to sustainable development?

Treaty of Rome(came into effect 1957)

Article 2 stated that the Community should

promote ‘a harmonious development of

economic activities, a continuous and balanced

expansion’. No mention of environmental

protection.

Single European Act(1987)

For the first time provided a formal, legal

underpinning for EU environment policy. Article

130r(2) established a new principle of

integration: ‘environmental protection

requirements shall be a component of the

Community’s other policies’.

Maastricht Treaty(1993)

Introduced the word ‘sustainable’ (not

sustainable development) to the formal aims of

the EU. Hence Article 2 was amended so that

‘continuous expansion’ was replaced by

‘sustainable and non-inflationary growth

respecting the environment’ while Article B of

the Common Provisions stated that a

Community objective was ‘to promote

economic and social progress which is

balanced and sustainable’.

Treaty of Amsterdam(1999)

Introduced the term ‘sustainable development’

so that Article 2 seeks ‘to promote throughout

the Community a harmonious, balanced and

sustainable development of economic activities’

and a new Article 6 strengthens the integration

principle: ‘Environmental protection

requirements must be integrated into the

definition and implementation of the

Community policies and activities referred to in

Article 3 [i.e. the full range of EU policies] in

particular with a view to promoting sustainable

development.’

Treaty of Nice(2003)

No significant extension of environmental aims

or powers.

environmental protection measures, but with no reference to the environ-
ment in the Treaty the European Community had no power to enact legisla-
tion in that area. Instead, environmental policy was dressed up as a market
regulation intended to ensure that common standards existed across mem-
berstates–a‘levelplaying-field’–topreventsomecountries from gaining a
competitive advantage by having lower environmental standards (and there-
fore lower industrial costs) than others. Using this approach to integration,
agrowingrange of environmental protection legislation was passed. More-
over, a series of Environmental Action Plans (see Chapter11)encouraged a
more strategic approach to environmental policy. The informal status of the
environment was ended by its inclusion for the first time in the 1987 Single
European Act, and subsequent treaties have established sustainable develop-
ment as an overall aim of the EU (see Box10.2), although to ease proposals
through the labyrinthine and slow policymaking process, officials still tend
toemphasise the ‘single market’ justification to win cross-departmental sup-
port (Lenschow 2005 : 308). From the mid-1980s, a tranche of environmental
legislation was passed, affecting water, air, waste, chemicals and nature.
Today, the environmentalacquis–the laws, rules and procedures governing
environmental policy – encompasses some 500 legislative items and repre-
sents a substantial corpus of progressive and far-reaching environmental