Towards sustainability in the European Union? Steps within the European commission towards integrating the environment into other European Union policy sectors

The principal vehicle employed by the European Union to implement Agenda 21 is the Fifth Environmental Action Programme, Towards Sustainability, which was published by the European Commission in March 1992. A key theme running through the Action programme is the need to integrate the needs of the environment into the development and implementation of other policies, particularly in five key sectors ‐agriculture, energy, industry, transport and tourism. Integration is seen as a fundamental pre‐requisite for sustainable development. The Fifth Environmental Action Programme, however, is not binding on the European Union's Member States, nor in practice on individual directorates‐general within the European Commission itself. A number of progress reports on the Fifth Environmental Action Programme produced by the Commission's Environment Directorate‐General (DG XI) and the European Environment Agency have noted the limited impact so far of the programme and the need for greater political commitment to its objectives.

This study does not seek to describe substantive examples of integration that have occurred in the various European Union policy sectors since the publication of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme. Rather, the study is focused specifically on the procedural steps that have been taken by DG XI within the Commission to influence the development of European Union legislative and policy proposals in sectors outside its own immediate responsibilities. In its dealings with other directoraies‐general, DG XI has been obliged to rely on persuasion rather than power, a ‘bottom up’ as opposed to a ‘top‐down’ approach to integration. So far this has had limited effect and DG XI has begun to seek means to enhance its power in relation to the rest of the Commission in order to accelerate the process of integration.