Introduction

Abstract

Environmental policy is one of the most rapidly expanding areas of European Union (EU) policy activity. A substantial body of European environmental law has found its way into the statute books, environmental problems are high on the agenda of the Council of Ministers, disputes over environmental issues have been the subject of many of the key decisions of the European Court of Justice, and the performance of the EU in this area has been the focus of a growing body of scholarly research. It is strange, then, that so little is yet understood about the motives underlying EU environmental activities, about the way in which the EU defines the term ‘environment’, about the relationship between the economic and environmental priorities of the EU, about the relative merits of supranational and national responses to environmental management needs, or about the effects of EU policy.