Policy Evolution

Abstract

The environment was a latecomer to the policy agenda of European integration. Just as most national governments in the 1950s and 1960s paid little attention to the environmental implications of economic development, so the construction of the EEC was driven primarily by the quantitative dimensions of building the common market, with relatively little attention paid to its qualitative aspects. Such action as the Community took on environmental matters before 1972 was incidental to the central goal of removing the barriers to trade, and focused on harmonizing national environmental laws with a view to removing obstacles to that goal. During this period, the EEC lacked a sense that it was building an environmental ‘policy’, if a policy is defined as an inclusive and rational set of management objectives.