Is the European Parliament an Environmental Champion?

Project: Research project (funded)Research

Project Details

Description

The European Union plays a leading role advancing international environmental cooperation and is the major source of environmental legislation in all its member states. The European Parliament has enormous potential to shape the direction and content of national environmental policies, particularly since the introduction of codecision in 1993, a procedure giving it more influence in the legislative process. As the one directly elected EU body it is significant that the European Parliament is widely regarded as being the ‘greenest’, of the EU’s institutions. Yet this claim has never been subjected to detailed scrutiny.

This project tested the proposition that the European Parliament is an environmental champion. It analysed 112 pieces of environmental legislation passed between 1999 and 2009. Using an original classification amendments to legislative proposals were categorised according to their importance and environmental impact. The project findings question received wisdom about the European Parliament's environmental behaviour, the role of the European Commission in decision-making and shed light upon the impact of the 2004/2007 enlargments on environmental policy-making dynamics in the EU.

Layman's description

The European Union plays a leading role advancing international environmental cooperation and is the major source of environmental legislation in all its member states. The European Parliament has enormous potential to shape the direction and content of national environmental policies, particularly since the introduction of codecision in 1993, a procedure giving it more influence in the legislative process. As the one directly elected EU body it is significant that the European Parliament is widely regarded as being the ‘greenest’, of the EU’s institutions. Yet this claim has never been subjected to detailed scrutiny.

This project tested the proposition that the European Parliament is an environmental champion. It analysed 112 pieces of environmental legislation passed between 1999 and 2009. Using an original classification amendments to legislative proposals were categorised according to their importance and environmental impact. The project findings question received wisdom about the European Parliament's environmental behaviour, the role of the European Commission in decision-making and shed light upon the impact of the 2004/2007 enlargments on environmental policy-making dynamics in the EU.

Key findings

The investigators coded over 7,000 European Parliament amendments addressed to 112 pieces of environmental legislation over a ten year period. The analysis of the data enables us to question received wisdom about the European Parliament's environmental behaviour, the role of the European Commission in decision-making and also sheds light upon the impact of the 2004/2007 enlargements on environmental policy-making dynamics in the EU.

Specifically we find that the environmental importance of an amendment is a good predictor of its chance of success, i.e. the greener that an amendment is, the less likely it is to be incorporated into EU legislation; the EP’s behaviour has changed over time, specifically it has become less environmentally radical; the Commission is a key factor shaping the success of the EP’s amendments; and early indications suggested that there was little evidence to support pessimistic predictions about the negative impact of enlargement on environmental policy outputs.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date26/11/0731/08/09

Funding

  • ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (ESRC): £93,790.92