Which theory best explains the development of EU environmental policy?

The successful teaching of EU supranational surroundingsal insurance polity has been the subject of lots re pennyime demand within various disciplines. wiz promising accomplishable action for cross-disciplinary seekes of EU environmental policy invokes the concept of supranational government activity. regime possible action might expect to explain a dismissg-up deal about the information of EU environmental policy in world(prenominal) environmental affairs.It is insightful to run into the EU environmental policy as a political science given that the government activity definition or so frequently cited is so broad as to certainly include the EU where norms, rules and decision-making procedures in a given atomic number 18a of world-wide relations (Krasner, 1983, p. 2) are express to be in existence. This sort of theory would en sufficient to(p) one to consider the connections betwixt the institutions of the EU and the member republics.It whitethorn expla in the inter-state relationship that lies butt joint the formation and development of EU international environmental policy. Te positions the EU projects in international affairs are evidently themselves the product of come to mediation and hold bargaining directed by institutions. This penning testament consider the work of both international relations (IR) and international justice (IL) scholars to evaluate regime theory as instrument of EU environmental policy, using ozone layer depletion exemplar study as specific example. master(prenominal) Body International Regime TheoryAlthough international regimes were routined much earlier by IL as a means of natural endowment an vizor of healthy regulation in unregulated areas (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 190), the regime theory has gained significance origin all toldy within the discipline of IR. The regime theory was developed to explain stability in the international system in spite of the absence or decline of domination (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 202). It is only in the 1990th that regime theory has again become the focal point of well-grounded scholars searching for ways to stimulate international cooperation (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 10). This requires the organization into a matching pattern of the disciplines of IR and IL, the relationships amidst them having been one of mutual neglect, as explained by Hurrell and Kingsbury Regime theorists have extended to neglect the particular(a) status of jural rules, to downplay the links between specific sets of rules and the broader structure of the international legal system, and to underrate the multifactoriality and variety of legal rules, work ones, and procedures.On the some other hand, speculative accounts of international . . . right have often paid rather petty explicit attention to the political bargaining processes that underpin the emergence of new-made norms of international . . . law, to the map of proponent and inte em it in inter-state negotiations, and to the range of political operators that explain whether states depart or will not comply with rules. (1992, p. 12) in that respect is no absolute agreement on what precisely forms an international regime.Goldie, in one of his works in this area, described regimes as (1) the acceptance, amongst a conference of States, of a community of laws and of legal ideas (2) the mutual respect and recognition accorded by certain States to the unilateral policies of others acting in substantial conformity with their own, enmeshing all the States concerned in a regime with respect to those policies (3) a vernacular loyalty, among a group of States, to the principle of abstention regarding a common resource. 1962, p. 698) doubting Thomas Gehring (1990) presents a more integrated work in this area, in particular as it better addresses the role of IL in international regime theory. He identifies international regimes as the regulations, developed within the c ontext of a consultation of parties to the regime, governing a specific area of IR. Within this structure, IL is the search for unanimity and agreement on the priorities and plans for international action.Once these are made clear, norms will develop as to how to carry out these priorities and plans, resulting in accepted norms or shared expectations concerning the behaviour of states (Gehring, 1990, p. 37). Certainly, this progress from priority ground to norm gradual development takes time, but it is the regime structure that allows for the process to take bug out at all. Thus, regimes render the building blocks for the development of norms and rules. instruction of EU Environmental Policy and Regime Theory. The influence of EU within environmental affairs cannot be disregarded as the environment in general has to a great extent become a effect of international concern. Of the many international organisations and specialised bodies dealing with environmental acts, the one mos tly associated with such work is the European Union. Among other bodies and specialized agencies, the EU is most closely involved in environmental affairs. Regime theory is the most commonly employed hypothetical paradigm in the study of EU international environmental politics.The study of the EU foc economic spendings upon how the EU affects the prospects of regime-building and how it may create the path of international cooperation. By signing up to agreements on behalf of its member states, the EU increases the scope of a regime by change magnitude the obligations of states that may in a different way have adoptive lower standards. The EU pulls states into commitments. Often, however, the convoy analogy (Bretherton and Vogler 1997, p. 22) more precisely describes the process, whereby action is slow by the slowest part of the train.This effect is seen during the ozone negotiations. in spite of the attempts of Denmark and Germany to push things forward, the precluding manoeuv re of France and the UK were able to ensure that on many occasions the EU was condemned to immobility (Jachtenfuchs, 1990, p. 265). Yet, by coordinating the position of (currently) 27 member nations in environmental negotiations, the focussing makes smaller the complexity of negotiations and decreases pressures upon international organisations to perform that function.Approaches informed by regime theory would also help to see the leadership role of the EU as an effort to originate cooperation conditional on the involvement of other parties. Hence the statement of a greenhouse gas decrease cigarette as early as 1990 was planned as a original move in the nice, reciprocate, retaliate strategy that Connelly and Smith (2002, p. 269 indicated is the necessary to cooperation. Paterson (1996, p. 105) notes, for example, that The announcement of the EU target in October 1990 was explicitly designed to influence the outcome of the warrant World Climate Conference and to precipitate inter national negotiations.Usually, however, IR perspectives tend to overlook the significance of intra-country dynamics to the creation of positions in international agreements. This factor severely restricts their applicability to EU decision-making development. In spite of that, in the ozone case it could be argued a combination of domestic and international pressures best explain the role of the EU in creating and supporting the regime in question. The EU is as one unit in this case.The four relationships are one between member states and the EU between the EU organisations in their internal power efforts among the boards of directors and eventually between the various boards of directors and interest groups (Matlary, 1997, p. 146). With the EU environmental policy one clearly has a regime within a regime. Models of multi-level formation used to explain the policy development within Europe may be extended to include the international dimension.Viewed from this perspective, EU intern ational environmental negotiations become a site of debate between transnational networks of environment departments from government and regional economic institutions working together with NGOs and sympathetic international organisations (such as UNEP), set against networks including Trade and Industry departments, business lobbies and international organisations which kindle the interests of industry (such as UNIDO ( United Nations Industrial Development Organisation)) (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 36). The co-ordinated groups operate horizontally and vertically and across national, regional and international levels including state and non-state players alike in strategic unions established on particular issues. Cooperation in Environmental Problems Collaboration is represented by the game, wherein each state follows a dominant strategy that leads to suboptimal payoffs for both. Regime theory presents the EU primarily as a tool.The EU deliberately seeks to change the system, desi gn strategies to do so, and attempts to accomplish the strategies. To assess the development of EU environmental policy in environmental cooperation, then, two potential roles of the EU must be examined the EU as tool and the EU as self-supporting advocate. The EU helps states overcome the complexity of issues to arrive at coordination equilibrium. States usually remain concerned that others will elbow grease them, and the EU is needed to increase confidence in compliance.As independent actor, the EU is expected to play a significant role in environmental cooperation. Increased autonomy of the EU on some environmental issues and the increased needs of states to rely on them for collaboration and coordination allow those organizations with unified leadership and significant resources to have independent effects. Ozone The First Global altercate The development of the regime intended to limit the release into the atmosphere of ozone-depleting chemicals is in many ways a case of EU-U S relations.The key turning points in the development of the process of negotiating from a framework convention at capital of Austria through to legally imposing an obligation communications protocol commitments at Montreal, capital of the United Kingdom and Copenhagen reflect changes in the negotiating position of the EU and the US (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 230). The development of ozone polices can be traced back to 1977. The can ban established in the US put the US in conditions to push for a global ban on chlorofluorocarbons.Process of negotiating moved very gradually at offset against strong European opposition to cuts in CFCs, despite a Council resolvent in March 1980 restricting the use of CFCs, reacting to American pressure and increase public concern over the ozone problems. The supporters of controls (the US, Canada, the Nordic states, Austria and Switzerland), met together in 1984 to create the Toronto group. The EU initially indicated that no controls were necessar y. However, eventually it admitted that a production efficacy cap may be required and presented a draft protocol that included their 1980 measures.The offered 30 per cent reduction was without difficulty achievable because use was already declining (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 200) and in essence served to fix the status quo (Jachtenfuchs, 1990). The stalemate that resulted between the EU and the Toronto group made certain that only a framework convention could be made at Vienna. This promised intercommunion in research and monitoring and promotion of information-sharing. At the March 1986 assemblyof the EU Council of Ministers, the EU took a position of a 20 per cent CFC production cut.This was partly impelled by the threat of unilateral action by the US to impose trade sanctions against the EU (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 261). The Montreal Protocol later agreed in September 1987 required cuts of 50 per cent from 1986 levels of production and use of the five principal CFCs by 1 999. The figure of a 50 per cent cut was established as a settlement of a altercate by concessions on both sides between the EUs proposed freeze and the USs proposal for a 95 per cent cut.The Protocol contained an interval for the implementation of the Protocol by less developed countries, restrictive measures on trade with non-members and an ozone fund for engineering science transport. This latter element of the agreement is especially important for the EU for, as Jachtenfuchs (1990, p. 272) states, The success of the EUs environmental diplomacy in this important field will to a large extent depend on how far it is able to provide technical and financial assistance to developing countries.As a regional economic integration organisation, the EU was granted permission to abut consumption limits together rather than country by country. This was planned to depict some transfers of national CFC production quotas among EU member-states in club to allow commercial producers in Euro pe to improve production processes cost-effectively. patronage this concession, some European members in the Protocol process believed that they were bullied into an agreement prospering to US industry, dubbing the Montreal agreement The DuPont Protocol (Parsons, 1993, p. 61).In spite of that, on 14 October 1988 the Council adopted a law, transforming every aspect of the Protocol into EU polity. The law came into force instantly in order to emphasise the importance of the issue and to prevent trade distortions which might emerge from non-simultaneous use of the new legislation (Connelly and Smith 2002, p. 269). At the March assembly of the EU Environment Council which took place in 1989, the UK after a long delay joined the rest of the EU in agreeing to phase-out all CFCs as soon as possible but not later than 2000 (Parsons, 1993, p. 47).At the same time France submitted to remote pressure to drop its uncompromising position. The London assembly of the members in June 1990 was w herefore able to agree that all entirely halogenated CFCs would be phased-out by the year 2000, with successive lessening of 85 per cent in 1997 and 50 per cent in 1995. Some member states have gone beyond the restrictions say in the international agreements, however. Germany, for instance, has passed legislation stating that CFCs be removed by 1993, halons by 1996, HCFC 22 by 2000 and CT (carbon tetrachloride) and MC (methyl chloroform) by 1992 (Parsons, 1993).On another hand, behind the diplomacy of the negotiations between the states, the case is in a fundamental way one of the competing positions of the chemical companies, chiefly, ICI (in the UK), Du Pont (in the US) and Atochem (in France). Industry agents served formally on European national delegations through the whole of the process. EU industrialists believed that American companies had endorsed CFC controls in order to enter the profitable EU export markets with patronage products that they had secretly developed (Be nedick, 1991, p. 23). The EU followed the industry line and reflected the views of France, Italy and the United Kingdom in its policy. The significance of these commercial considerations is easily noticed in the persistent efforts to delimitate cuts in HFCs and HCFCs (perceived to be the best alternative to CFCs). The EU has found it snarly to come to an agreeable position on reducing the production and consumption of these chemicals because substitute chemicals were not yet easily available.Indecision could also be explained by the fact that some European producers wanted to establish export markets for HCFCs in the less developed south. The differing commercial interests regarding the ozone issue presented the difficulty the EU faced in its effort to formulate common policy positions in international environmental process of negotiating. This case demonstrates that ozone depletion was one of the first global environmental issues to create a coordinated and consentient internatio nal response.Despite remaining weakness in the ozone regime it is regarded to be one of the fewer tangible successes of EU international environmental policy taking into account that governments took action before certain proof of environmental disaster had occurred. The EU has explicit rules, agreed upon by governments, and provides a framework for the facilitation of ongoing negotiations for the development of rules of law. Regime theory regards EU international environmental policy as a means by which states solve collective environment problems.Regime theory, as well as most current studies of cooperation in international politics, treats the EU as means to an end as intermediate variables between states interests and international cooperation. The EU is an independent actor which plays an independent role in changing states interests and especially in promoting cooperation. Conclusion The consideration in this paper of the ozone depletion regimes reveals that there is prospe ct for development in the international legal order. The picture that emerges of EU international environmental policy and politics is a complex and relating to the study of several subject disciplines.It should be noted that there is none predominant theoretical perspectives in international environmental politics adequate to explain this rich complexity. Given the complex reality of environmental cooperation between states and the context within which it develops, explaining policy processes and developments by a single theoretical perspective is an uncertain prospect. Still better understanding of the developments of EU environmental policy in these processes may be fostered by relying on a regime theory.