EU expansion, scientific debate, and environmental governance: Does the EU risk repeating the North American experience?

Changes in the science and technology sectors of Central and East European states since the 1980s have resulted in enormous changes to the composition, access, and influence of the scientific community upon environmental policy. Such changes were drastic enough during the transition from communist rule, but when combined with subsequent accession into the European Union, the influence of the science community upon the environmental debate has become even more complicated and less well understood. This paper examines the role that the scientific community of the new EU member states plays in legitimating the EU's environmental discourse of risk and the precautionary principle, and argues that the accession process has posed severe challenges to the ability of the science and technology communities to positively influence larger environmental debates. By comparing the experience of the United States in increasingly centralized decision-making processes, the EU risks marginalizing vital criticism in the same manner as has occurred in the US and Canada. The consequences of this may include a move from the precautionary principle to NIMBY-ism in CEE states, and loss of international environmental leadership on the part of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]