Anna Barnwell

ES334 Project: Implementation and Compliance of
Envrionmental Policy in the European Union

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Conclusion

The sheer difficulty of coordinating negotiations and tactics across fifteen states puts limits on the ability of the EU to negotiate effectively (Grubb and Gupta 2000). Because of this vast range of differences, the EU’s ability to adopt progressive environmental policy, as we have learned, has had varied results of compliance. Implementation of policy at the domestic level of climate change should be improved across the board. The global scale of the climate change issue means that policy needs to be functioning on more than one level. Europe must substantiate climate policy at a European level so that the international community will see that compliance to climate policy is a reality (Grubb and Gupta 2000).

(The European Environment: State Outlook 2005)

This paper has shown that searching for an idealistic form of compliance is difficult, especially in the context of the European Union where the range of institutional, cultural, and political is diverse. Nonetheless, whether the European Union has an entirely effective or perfectly compliant effect on domestic policy, there is no doubt that an effect has been made. It would be impossible for any trade dependent country to not be affected by the environmental policy compliance of another (Sbragia 1996). As the climate regime reflects, success of the European Union does rest on some level of convergence between policies and institutions. Whether the misfit is small or large, the EU needs to focus on how to adapt to differences for cooperation on a global level to be successful.