Greening governmentefforts to improve planning at three levels of government: supranational,
national and local.
◗ EU Environmental Action Plans
The environmental programmes of the EU are a unique attempt to co-
ordinate and integrate environmental policy across national boundaries.^5
The first Environmental Action Plan (EAP) was launched in 1973 when the
European Community began approving environmental regulations aimed at
ensuring that common standards existed across member states (see Chapter
10 ). Although the first EAP established several important and progressive
principles, notably the need for preventive action, in practice the first three
EAPs pursued a regulatory, end-of-pipe approach that lay firmly within the
traditional paradigm. After an integration clause was included in the 1987
Single European Act (see Box10.2), the fourth EAP (1987–92) identified an
ambitious nineteen priority areas and took tentative steps towards integrat-
ing environmental considerations into other EU policies.
The fifth EAP (1992–2000), significantly titledTowards Sustainability(Euro-
pean Commission 1992 )and suffused with the language of ecological mod-
ernisation, outlined a bold strategy to improve integration focused on five
keysectors – tourism, industry, energy, transport and agriculture – using
awide range of policy initiatives and instruments, including sustainable
tourism, industrial eco-audits and eco-labels, energy conservation schemes,
carbon taxes and set-aside schemes protecting environmentally sensitive
areas (Liberatore 1997 ;Wilkinson 1997 ). Although several of these initia-
tives were implemented, an official evaluation of the fifth EAP acknowl-
edged that ‘practical progress towards sustainable development has been
rather limited’ (European Communities 2000 : 9). It proved especially diffi-
cult to persuade other Directorates-General (ministries) inside the Commis-
sion to place environmental issues above their own sectoral priorities, so
there was little progress towards intersectoral integration, apart from in the
industry sector. It seems that the EU mirrors many national governments in
struggling to achieve the kind of deep-seated social learning by policy elites
that might usher in greater integration of environmental considerations.
Furthermore, the evaluation report bemoaned the absence of ‘clear recog-
nition of commitment from member states and stakeholders’ (ibid.: 9); for
example, their failure to agree a fundamental reform of the Common Agri-
cultural Policy far outweighed any marginal benefits from set-aside schemes.
An effort to kick-start the integration process at the Cardiff Summit of EU
leaders in June 1998 by generating stronger political commitment and iden-
tifying key strategies and tools needed to bring it to fruition had some
positive effect, albeit uneven across sectors (Baker 2006 :149), although ‘the
commitment of the EU’s political leadership to environmental integration
remains volatile, especially during difficult economic times’ (Lenschow 2005 :
321).