Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Environment and Regional Cohesion
in the Enlarged European Union - Differences
in Public Opinion
Petr Dostál
4.1 Issues of Environmental, Regional and Cohesion Policies
This chapter presents analyses of trends of current public opinion on issues of envi-
ronmental policies and regional and cohesion policies across 27 polities of the
European Union (EU). Public opinion and mass interest articulations of national
electorates are central to studies on EU policies, because they form an important
feedback that often implies barrier effects on policy-making and decision-making
of governing political elites of the democratic countries concerned. Economic and
social transformations associated with development of current post-industrial soci-
eties have resulted in the EU in new challenges for environmental policies and
regional and cohesion policies.
Environmental policy-making was a latecomer to the policy agenda of European
integration and has gained gradually in importance since the 1970s. The construc-
tion of the European Economic Community (EEC) was primarily driven since the
1957 Treaty of Rome by the quantitative considerations of building the common
market and paying little attention to its qualitative aspects (McCornick, 2001). In
1987, the Single European Act confirmed that environmental management was one
of the formal policy goals of European integration. The environment is now one
of the primary policy interests of the EU. The Single European Act instituted an
explicit legal basis upon which environmental protection could operate. However,
the internal market measures were to be decided through qualified majority voting
in the Council of Ministers, those concerning environmental protection required the
unanimity of all Member States. The 1993 Maastricht Treaty listed the environment
as a key policy goal of the EU and extended qualified majority voting to environ-
mental policy-making and also strengthened the role of the European Parliament in
this sector of policy-making (Dinan, 2005).
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