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This contribution addresses questions regarding the future of European environmental policy after the EU has been enlarged to include a number of Central and Eastern European countries. The existing literature, based mainly on EU-related 'top-down' variables such as status of harmonisation, availability of pre-accession funds, and future Council voting dynamics, predicts a largely negative impact of enlargement for progressive environmental policy. However, based on extensive survey data from within the candidate countries, this contribution asserts that this prediction should be qualified. It was also found that current theories in respect of national integration deal poorly with such 'bottom-up' perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the importance of the role of state socialist environmental conditions, practices and policies in the integration and the accession of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the European Union. Efforts of post-socialist to fight environmental problems in Europe in the late 1980; Description of unevenness of environmental degradation in CEE countries; Environmental effects of post-communist transformations.

Accession to the European Union is shaping the development of environmental movements in Central and Eastern Europe by defining much of the agendas of environmental NGOs and by moulding the context in which groups act and, therefore, their means of activism. Individual organisations and the mix of organisations in a movement, in turn, evolve to tackle these agendas and engage in these means of activism. This study outlines several paths of direct and indirect EU influence over the evolution of these movements. While such an evolution strengthens the movements' ability to engage in political processes at the national and EU levels, both these movements' internal decision-making mechanisms and the EU's policy processes must allow for input from grassroots groups. Avenues exist for grassroots input into the policies national movements pursue, but these paths of influence are weak. The EU's decision-making processes are even more remote. Balancing external and internal influence is crucial, however, if these movements are to serve as channels of citizen participation in politics and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution assesses the impact of market liberalisation on the sustainability of the transformation in ten Central and East European countries (CEE10). Although a significant body of literature assesses economic and social consequences of the transformation, there are limited numbers of investigations that examine the impact of liberalisation on the environment. For CEE countries, assessing environmental effects of structural change in the economy, rising personal consumption, rapid transition to market-oriented economies, and dramatically increased liberalisation is critical. Equally important is assessing the outcomes of environmental and other policy and institutional reforms. To assess these changes, a set of sustainability indicators is used to estimate an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and sustainability trends. The EKC concept assumes that environmental pressure rises initially with an increase in income but declines beyond some estimated level or 'turning point'. The question is how market liberalisation has affected this observed relationship. This study demonstrates the progress of the CEE10, relative to other CEE and new independent states (NIS), and how much progress is still needed to secure more sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central and East European (CEE) states are implementing sweeping environmental policy reforms as they gain EU membership. This concluding chapter draws attention to key arguments in the volume and elaborates on four key themes that enrich conventional notions about Europeanisation and challenge prevailing views about the impacts that CEE states are having on environmental quality in an enlarged EU: the importance of capacity limitations and efforts to address them, the pesence of mixed messages and conflicting EU priorities, the importance of non-state actors, and the need for multi-directional exchange of ideas and information. These themes suggest, among other things, that EU officials and programs are capable of greatly improving some areas of environmental policy in CEE countries even as they make some areas of policy and societal behaviour less sustainable. This essay includes discussions of some possible ramifications of a larger EU for global environmental governance and some lessons from the 2004 enlargement that may inform understanding of future rounds of EU expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the collapse of communist rule, many aspects of the environmental policy agendas in Central and East European (CEE) states have been influenced by the desire to join the EU. This introduction presents key concepts and issues associated with the transition away from the communist systems and the process of EU expansion in CEE countries. Specifically, it examines major political and environmental changes that have taken place since 1989, discusses the role of foreign assistance in these transitions, and summarises the 'Europeanisation' turn in contemporary social science research. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the ways that the contributions to this volume augment conventional views of eastern enlargement of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has transformed environmental policymaking for the states of Europe. In many environmental policy areas the EU now plays an international leadership role. How will the planned accession of ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, where environmental capacity is still weak and environmental problems are serious, affect environmental policymaking within the EU? This contribution seeks to answer this question from a comparative perspective by looking at past cases of accession to the EU, with particular attention to the accession of the southern European states that are economically less well off than their northern neighbours and where environmental protection has a weaker tradition in national policy. It argues that a variety of changes to EU institutions and norms have helped to strengthen the EU's capacity to protect the environment, mitigate against moves towards the least common denominator, and aid weaker states in coming into compliance with EU regulations. Particularly important in this regard are the influence of the relatively strong and increasingly widespread voices of environmental advocates in Europe, the greater variety of environmental policy instruments available to member states that should make implementation more flexible and cost-effective, institutional reform that has addressed the EU's 'democratic deficit', and the importance that environment has taken on as an arena for foreign policy leadership by the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the enlargement of the European Union (EU) draws close, democratic concerns remain as to the institutional and procedural design of this emerging polity. This contribution explores this concern by investigating how the informal politics of environmental policymaking shape both public involvement and democratic legitimacy. Interviews with officials from the EU suggest that a top-down, technocratic approach to policymaking increases the gap between Brussels and publics in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. EU officials view environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as recipients of policy information, rather than as potential sources of public opinion and knowledge. This contribution demonstrates that while formal mechanisms may provide symbolic access, the influence and access of NGOs that do not possess technical or scientific expertise is limited. As integration continues, CEE states will become part of a Eurocratic policymaking and administrative tradition that compounds democratic deficits in both CEE countries and the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the challenges that the candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe must address in order to fulfill the environmental policy requirements of the European Union. Fiscal challenge; Administrative challenge; Environmental challenge; Democratic deficit challenge.

Analyzes the potential effects of the European Union (EU) enlargement on environmental governance. Implications of the enlargement for EU environmental governance from a historical-institutionalist perspective; Differences of EU environmental governance regimes; Discussion of environmental problems and policy in Central and Eastern European countries.