Transport & environmental policy

Environmental policy

The concept of environment is crucial because it affects all citizens and therefore its presence in the EU legislation is of great importance. Unlike many other policies, the beginning of environmental policy does not go backwards up to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Its main concern (importance) was introduced in 1972, were a great amount of amendments, regulations, decisions, directives have been adopted by member states. Afterwards it became the part of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), more precisely in article 2, where its importance is firstly recognized by a EU treaty. Mainly, legislation has been introduced to cover such issues as “quality of water, waste management, air quality, control of pollution from transport, emission of chemicals, protection of wildlife and countryside, as well as measures to make a legislation work. As a result the EU’s environmental policy has an impact on all aspects of life” (Barnes, Barnes  294). It was easy for the EU to put all these aspects on the paper but more difficult to make 15 member states (currently 25) to adopt and practice these in reality. The main aim how to achieve this was through the introduction of different levels of sustainable development principles. The main aim of this policy in the future will be to redistribute costs and responsibilities among major polluters and encourage cooperation between different groups, industries etc.

As was already mentioned the importance of environment and its protection within the EU was introduced for the first time in 1972. The most important thing considering the legal basis of environmental issue was that in 1986 the SEA included a chapter on environmental issue which gave the policy much firmer legal background. The SEA clearly stated main points of environmental issue as follows: preserving, protecting and improving the quality of human life; contribution towards human health and rational use of natural resources. These were to be achieved by the three main principles which include: prevention is better than cure approach; rectification of damage at its source; polluter pays to clean up the damage. What is also important concerning the legal basis is that SEA included requirement that environment should become the common part of EU policies and also introduced the principle of subsidiarity. Another important concept that deserves mention is the sustainable development. The main idea was that in 1987 there was a need to develop environmental policy that would contribute to greater economic growth but with condition to be coupled with effective protection of the environment. The idea of sustainable development was introduced in 1987 “Bruntland Report, Our common future” (Barnes, Barnes 295). There was presented the idea that it is possible to achieve economic growth with the effective protection of environment. This created the principle of sustainable development which was supported in 1992 in Rio summit and is common phenomenon now days.

One good aspect to realize is how the economic prosperity and growth are connected to the environment issue. Here we can emphasize several main concepts. Firstly, it is argued economic benefits heading towards removal of trade barriers have a negative impact when it comes to an environment. The idea is that only at zero economic growth there is no negative impact on the environment. Secondly, there has to be ability of EU to intervene and harmonize definitions an standards in areas where differences might cause distortion to barriers to trade. If the state keeps the low standards compared to others where the standard is higher than they practice unfair advantage over these states. Simply speaking, if the low standards are cause of ignorance towards an environmental damage the product prices in such a country could be lower therefore giving companies unfair advantage on the Single Market. This is where the EU ought to intervene. Thirdly, there has to be some measure at EU level concerning environment in order to achieve effective implementation of legislation. Finally, there has to be potential for creation of eco-industries as well as development of new technologies that will promote more competition within the EU environmental industries and relationships.

The main concern is to see what is the great importance of the environmental policy and how it’s effective application can be achieved in reality. As was already said the EU environmental policy was started in 1972 during the Summit conference of Heads of the States in Paris. At the same time was launched the First Environmental Action Program to meet those main criteria. The criteria that emphasize why we need the environmental policy are the following: “prevent, reduce and eliminate pollution; maintain satisfactory ecological balance and protect the biosphere; avoid damage to ecological balance; to ensure that more account is taken of environmental aspects in town planning and land use; to work for those ends with non-member states of the EU” (Barnes, Barnes 301). The Second Environmental Action Program created more proactive approach in the environment, meaning that it looked for specific resources for the prevention of the pollution. The Third Environment Action Program emphasized mainly on the prevention rather than cure principle. Fourth Environmental Action Program as adopted at the same time as was the Single Market program, therefore representing clear linkage of economic and environmental issues. The economy should not undermine the protection of environment. Fifth Environmental Action Program was created mainly for better approach towards environmental management. The emphasis was put mainly on research and monitoring of environmental problems. This encouraged many states to use several tools (taxes, market-based instruments) to protect the environment. What is also important, the program established EU Financial Instrument for the Environment (LIFE). Most important is the last or the Six Environmental Action Program (until 2010). The main principles are: “tackling climate change and global warming; protect natural habitat and wildlife; addressing environment and health issues; preserving natural resources and managing wastes” (Environment). All policy is based on “polluter pays” principle (payment can be required through investment or taxation on goods etc.).

As with all other policies the environment policy has to be backed up by the financial support if it want to work properly and achieve the necessary progress. There are several places where the environmental policy can be supported from. Firstly, the Structural fund provided some 1 billion ECU during the period of 1988 to 1993. However taking into an account that environment is a crucial aspect of EU policies this amount of money is negligible for such a period of time. Secondly, Cohesion fund within the EU provided some very small amount of money in 1994, which again made no significant progress in such a crucial issue. Finally, the most important source of funding is currently The Financial Instrument for the Environment (LIFE). However this was not created as to be separate agency financing the EU environmental issues but only as a body that ensures that financial support coming from all different resources is used in a most efficient way so to get the highest possible impact (sustainable development). As we can see here lies one of the main problems of environmental policy which is the lack of financial support for its effective implementation. For the future concern would be to increase of funding from whatever sources if the EU environmental policy is about to be efficient.

One of the most crucial issues concerning environmental policy is to see to what extent it is   actually effective. One of the first concerns is the actually there is a lack of commitment among the Member states. More precisely, the most of the legislation was adopted in the form of directives. Directives is the principle were the end result is crucial but the way it is going to be achieved depends on the particular member state. As a consequence the gab has been created between the drafters of the legislation and member states who responsible for putting legislation into practice. Main point is that if particular member state lacks the commitment to particular issue then the effective outcome is uncertain. These cases occurred in countries such as Greece, Ireland, Italy and England. Other main concern in this area is that there has to be legal compliance with legislation. The main idea is that Commission encourages individuals to report infringements of EU directives, therefore Commission will afterwards restore the order. Commission has already taken action against states such as Belgium or Italy for not managing to introduce legislation to put EU’s laws into practice. In addition EU has introduced new penalty for states that fail to do so: “If the state concerned fails to take necessary measures…within the time limit laid down by the Commission, the latter may bring the case before the Court of Justice. In so doing it should specify the amount of lump sum or penalty payment…If the court of Justice finds that the Member State concerned has not complied with its judgment it may impose a lump sum or penalty payment on it” (Barnes, Barnes 307). Certainly those two factors are of great importance for effectiveness of policy as such but there are other factors, such as sufficient financial support and finding most appropriate means for solution of the problem for each specific area, that are even more important.

The need of agency that would support the enforcement of EU legislation led to creation of the European Environment Agency, based in Copenhagen. The main task of the agency is to provide the state of environment and warn before the problem is about to arise.  The agency mainly provides the information on which decision is made by member states; ensures the promotion of best practices for the environmental protection and technologies; helps the Commission in sorting the research results. However the main concern of the European Environment Agency is to support initiators and provide effective enforcement of legislation mainly by providing and spreading information.

There are several market-based instruments proposed by EU that are supposed to force both consumers and producers to behavior that is headed in direction, which is less harmful to the environment. The idea of EU is that by usage of economic and fiscal instruments the true price will be always paid therefore companies won’t be able to continue with wasteful practices. One of the first parts of the legislation to deal with such issue was “EU’s Eco-management and Audit Scheme Regulation (EMAR). It is based on the introduction of cycle of environmental auditing by a company with the objective of identifying and introducing measures to improve environmental performance over time” (Barnes, Barnes 312). Another type of instrument is so-called Eco-labeling, which makes consumers aware of the issue of environment and stressing out its importance. However in both cases the important thing is that information is made public and is commonly shared by the citizens of Europe. Another form how to intervene in this area is the form of taxation. The main idea is to impose taxes on the activities that cause pollution  The last of the concepts is the application of principle of subsidiarity, meaning applying same conditions of competition and same environmental practices to all member countries.

The very important concept of the environment within the EU is that pollution prevention and control has to be more integrated. The main idea of this approach was to supplement existing directives by new ones that would force member states to adapt their minimum discharge standards to best available techniques. This means that technology will be commonly developed but its adaptation will be left to member states to decide how to use it in most efficient way. Every member state will be required to impose limit values for all substances listed in “Annexes to Directives”. The main goal or purpose of this approach is to protect environment as a whole rather than let it transfer from one area to another.

Once again the useful thing would be to summarize all the successes and failures that EU has achieved within the concern of environmental policy. Among the biggest successes we could count the fact that despite failure to recognize the importance of environment in the Treaty of Rome it has been achieved later on in 1972 and made a part of TEU. The success is obviously the ability to create the legal principles and main ideas of the policy. Another form of success could be seen in the creation of EEA and establishment of Six Environmental Action Programs that deal with issue of environment into more details. Probably the biggest success was the creation of Market-based instruments to make public aware of an issue and also to make it participate in such an important concept. However there are probably more failures than successes in this case. One of the most obvious failures is that EU does not provide policy with sufficient financial backing therefore preventing it from being effective in a first place. The other failure, closely linked to the previous one, is that even the financial support given to the policy issues is not spent efficiently (not spent on most important concepts). Another failure could be the fact that EU deals with the environmental policy in a very broad sense. It means that