The Greening of the EU: The Common Agricultural Policy and the Structural Funds

Abstract

The degree to which environmental concerns are integrated into ‘non-environmental’ policies such as economic development, agricultural, transport, and energy policies provides a better measure of the ‘real’ performance of European Union (EU) environmental policy than does the total amount of legislation adopted. The author investigates the extent to which the environmental integration principle is applied in the EU's regional development, cohesion, and agricultural policies. Differences in the levels of integration achieved across these policy areas is determined by the ‘goodness of fit’ with preexisting policy philosophies and institutional structures, and the type of strategies pursued to achieve integration. Although indirect strategies are principally problematic, defensive strategies may succeed in conjunction with some active political or legal pressure.