Environmental Governance in Europe

Europeanisation and the Uneven Convergence of Environmental Policy: Explaining the Geography of EMAS

“…Additionally, our results corroborate the claim that firms may mobilise behind a new EU policy if it provides an opportunity to enhance competitive advantage (Knill, 2001;Weale et al, 2000). Take-up of EMAS is greater in countries with lower levels of economic productivity where, intuitively, we expect the financial returns to adoption are greater.…”

“…variables are positive and statistically significant, indicating that a higher level of demand from civil society is associated with a larger number of EMAS registered sites. Most likely this reflects the greater pressure faced by firms to demonstrate high levels of environmental performance in states characterised by strong post-materialist values (Weale et al, 2000). Public regulators in these countries are also more likely to be willing to support the adoption of EMAS using a range of financial and regulatory incentives.…”

“…The second lesson from our work is the inevitability of unevenness in the Europeanisation process. Many of the factors we identify as supporting and/or impeding policy convergence exhibit, to a greater or lesser extent, a high degree of stability (Weale et al, 2000). Although the demand for environmental protection, regulatory styles, trade flows, and so on, change over time, experience suggests that they do so only very slowly.…”

“…With their emphasis on selfregulation, flexibility and market-centeredness, voluntary policies are unlikely to be accepted by highly interventionist governments. Here, the incorporation of voluntary approaches such as EMAS will require changes to pre-existing regulatory arrangements, suggesting resistance or, at least, low levels of public support (Knill, 2001;Wilson, 2002;Weale et al, 2000). Instead, voluntary approaches are far more likely to be accepted and incorporated in countries with less interventionist, marketfriendly regulatory styles and structures.…”

“…Setting the agenda for this revised approach, the Commission's Fifth Action Programme (1992Programme ( -2000 recognised the limits to traditional mandatory regulation, and called for a broadening of EU environmental policy approaches. Thus, in addition to traditional top-down commandand-control measures, it was suggested that the EU should adopt more bottom-up, partnership-oriented and market-based ones (Weale et al, 2000).…”