ISSUES
RAISED BY THIS ENQUIRY
7. Protection of the
environment is now a significant component of the acquis communautaire[9].
The Commission's Communication refers, in its opening paragraph,
to over 200 pieces of Community environmental legislation having
been adopted. These would be instruments specifically directed
at environmental protection; but if the definition is extended
to other instruments which affect the environment, the count ranges
from over 280 (p 11) to nearly 500 (p 37, Appendix 5,
p 67). Recognition by the Community of the importance
of implementation and enforcement-as opposed to simply having
the laws in place-came relatively slowly. It was only with the
adoption of the Fourth Action Programme on the Environment in
1987 that the Council first underlined "the particular importance
it attaches to the implementation of Community legislation";
and the European Parliament around that time began taking an interest
in questions of implementation. The June 1990 Dublin European
Council reinforced the position with a declaration which invited
the Commission to conduct regular reviews, including evaluations
of existing directives, and emphasised the point that effective
implementation requires transparency.
8. The Commission's
Communication looks on implementation (in the broadest sense)
as a continuum, or "regulatory chain", of activity,
which links together at least five distinct stages. There are
various ways of describing these stages, and some may be seen
as concurrent or iterative, rather than sequential, but for present
purposes we have used the following terms, and have structured
the Report accordingly:
Preparation and Formulation
of Policy
Form and Drafting of Legislation
Transposition and Practical Implementation
Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation
(including inspectorates)
Enforcement (including machinery
for handling complaints)
9. A useful discussion
of the issues, with historical background, is to be found in the
paper by Nigel Haigh, Director, Institute for European Environmental
Policy, London, reproduced at Appendix 5; for a European
Parliament perspective, see the working document of 9 October
1996 by Ken Collins MEP and the Parliament's Resolution of 15 May
1997, reproduced at Appendices 6 and 7 respectively.
SIGNIFICANT
DEVELOPMENTS OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS
10. The Department of
the Environment (DoE), in oral evidence, gave us a useful tour
d'horizon of developments since our 1992 Report (Q 3).
Of these, plainly the most significant was the Treaty on European
Union ("the Maastricht Treaty"), which entered into
force on 1 November 1993. Under one of the various amendments
to the EC Treaty, qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council
of Ministers became the standard procedure for adoption of environmental
measures, apart from those of a fiscal nature; and the European
Parliament's role in the legislative process was enhanced by more
extensive application to environmental legislation of the "cooperation"
procedure[10]
(which requires a unanimous vote in Council to override the Parliament)
and by the introduction of the "codecision" procedure[11]
(applicable inter alia to "general action programmes"
in the environment), which effectively gives the Parliament a
veto[12].
The Maastricht Treaty introduced two other measures of general
application but important for environmental legislation-fines
for Member States who fail to comply with judgments of the Court
of Justice[13];
and the formal embodiment of the principle of subsidiarity in
Community law (see box). Under Commission procedures introduced
in 1992 (the so-called Edinburgh Guidelines) all draft proposals
to the Council and the European Parliament have to be assessed
for compatibility with the principle. The draft Treaty of Amsterdam
includes a new protocol on subsidiarity[14].
