Environmental Policy of the European Union

2715 Words6 Pages

The EU on the environmental path
Introduction
The European Union (EU) is a local political and economic union between 28 member-states. However, apart from its domestic political significance it is also considered as an important international actor, which participates in the ongoing debates concerned with number of issues. These issues go beyond traditional security and economic threats along with questions posed to the members of such international organizations as the United Nations (UN). Thus, apart from negotiation or evaluation of traditional threats, such matters as environmental problems, poverty, illiteracy ect. became an important part of global and international political agenda. As a result of increasing public concern and awareness of the ecological problems, the “politicization” of environmental agenda impacted on creation of number of international and regional resolutions to be involved into daily politics of states.
The EU ratified the UN treaties on the environmental protection and adopted its own regulations to comply with them and consequently create its own environmental policies. In other words, the main aim of the EU was to become a global leader in advancing this field. Thus, in 1980s there was an increasing wave of environmentalism, with inclusion of “green” parties to the empowered European Parliament (Hey 2005, 22), along with increased interest in completion of the single market agenda in Europe (Yesilada and Wood 2010, 43). Thus, enhancing similar environmental standards, increased public access on the agenda-setting process in the EU institutions, and international political trends were the main reasons for environmental direction of the EU politics.
Nevertheless, there existed other issues underlyi...

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