IES Policy Forum

The European Parliament's Green Credentials - An analysis of the EP and co-decision for the environment

Left to right: L. Krämer, C. Burns, S. Oberthür
Picture of the lecturers
On Monday, 8 March, the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Institute for European Studies (IES) organised another event in their series of Environmental Policy Fora. The topic was The European Parliament's Green Credentials - An analysis of the EP and co-decision for the Environment. Speaker Charlotte Burns presented the results of her study on the European Parliament's green credentials in the co-decision procedure in the 2000s, which investigated whether the European Parliament is an environmental champion and whether co-decision has been good for the environment. Burns worked in the European Parliament as a Research Assistant to the Chair of the Environment Committee for two years before undertaking her PhD at the University of Sheffield. She currently teaches at the University of Leeds. Her discussant was the distinguished Professor Doctor Ludwig Krämer, Honorary professor for European environmental law at the universities of Bremen and Copenhagen and visiting professor at University College, London. Krämer worked with the Commission for three decades as Head of Unit of Legal Affairs, Waste, waste management and environmental governance in DG Environment. Sebastian Oberthuer, Academic Director of IES chaired the policy forum. Over 30 interested participants engaged in a vivid discussion.

Summary


Charlotte Burns has spent the last 3 years working on the project - Is EP environmental champion? The starting point of the project is that the European Parliament is often described, or describes itself as a defender of the Environment. Burns and her colleagues set out to explore, based on extensive case study analysis, whether this statement holds true. With a large dataset and selected criteria such as at which reading an environmental legislative proposal it was proposed, the level of ambitiousness, its importance, and the degree to which the proposal was adopted by the Council of Ministers.

The study did not set radically green criteria, but focused on the reality of the political environment. The study showed some interesting outcomes. For instance, the more environmentally stringent a proposal is, the less likely it is to be adopted. Also, EP6 shows to have less ambitious environmental legislative proposals, but in turn they are more likely to be adopted. Burns also stressed that the shifting norms of decision-making, more informal meetings and the enlargement of the EU affect the European Parliaments work and decisions. Finally, it seems as the EP is an environmentally benign actor, but it is no longer an environmental champion, and is unlikely to become more radical.

Ludwig Krämer spoke about his own experience of working with the European Commission. He raised several issues that hinder the EP in succeeding as an environmental champion. For one the parties of the EP are not homogeneous and they do not have an environmental programme. There are enormous differences within groups and language barriers remain an issue. A second barrier is that there is little historic memory in the EP, which creates a consistency problem. Hence, when an issue is discussed and planned to be re-discussed at a later point, there may be a new parliament, and previous discussions, requests and plans may be lost.

Krämer gave examples where this was a problem, such as a discussion on whether the EEA should be given enforcement power, setting recycling targets and phasing out of water discharges. The EP’s reactive character remains without its own environmental programme and because of their lack of expert knowledge on specific technical issues. In order to be more successful, the EP should consider ways to utilize their possibilities and authority better, finding ways to keep knowledge within the institution co-operate with experts and look into the actual implementation of their legislations.

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