Environmental Implications of Eastern Enlargement: The End of Progressive EU Environmental Policy?

In the years immediately following the fall of the communist regime, Central and Eastern European (CEE) governments paid significant attention to environmental policy developments, both at home and abroad, as a consequence of domestic environmental mobilisation. However, after 1992 the nature of environmental policy reform changed. Legal and institutional change could no longer rely on its domestic base and instead policy development became a function of the ‘structural imperative’ of reform in CEE countries [Slocock, 1996]. In other words, reform was an unwelcome, but necessary part of EU environmental harmonisation. By the late 1990s, an overriding concern in CEE states was to minimise the impact of these EU reforms on economic growth and competitiveness. Thus, in contrast to the initial proactive approach to environmental policy, CEE countries have become passively compliant with EU requirements and a strictly national perspective in this policy arena has been eclipsed by EU hegemony.