ISIS Report 28/09/05
Can the EU Help Build a Sustainable World?
Dr. Caroline Lucas MEP on the challenges
and opportunities for a sustainable world in the new European Union
The challenges
I want to talk about the role
of the European Union (EU) in helping to build a sustainable world, and in particular, to outline some of the challenges that need
to be overcome before the EU can fulfill its potential in this most urgent
of tasks.
And the case that I would
make is that the EU is facing something of a crisis in its policymaking on
sustainable development, that the gains which the EU has made in the past
could well be lost in the future, and that the role of the EU as a progressive
force on sustainable development issues is by no means guaranteed in the future.
Admittedly the
word ‘crisis’ is a strong one. But this rather grim assessment is based on
three things in particular: first, an enlargement process which, I would argue,
has lost its way; second, a review of the EU’s own sustainable
development strategy which reveals that progress towards the
quite modest goals it has set itself has been – in most, but not all areas – painfully slow;
and third, a draft EU constitution which has failed either to
reinvigorate the EU with a new sense of purpose, or to grasp this unprecedented
opportunity to put sustainable development at the heart of the Union.
Set that against
the wider political context of the growing euro-scepticism across a large number of EU member states;
the no votes to the constitution in France and the Netherlands, the low turn-out in European elections, and the
growing disconnection between the EU institutions and the citizens
they are supposed to represent,
I think we have some justification for using that word, crisis.
You
may be familiar with the idea that the two Chinese ideograms for “crisis” represent threat and opportunity
respectively and I would readily admit that the situation in the EU at the
moment is not only one of threats, but also some big opportunities out
there, and one of the things I want to talk about is how we grasp those opportunities,
and put sustainable development at the heart of EU policy-making.
EU enlargement
Impact on environment in accession countries
So first, let’s take a quick
look at the impact of EU enlargement on the environment in
the accession countries. Will enlargement
result in a step forward or backward for sustainable development?
At first glance it might seem that the answer is obviously a positive one
- but quite frankly, to my mind, the jury is still out. Because while, quite
clearly, the environment in the accession countries will benefit from the
implementation of some EU environmental legislation in areas like air pollution
and water quality, there is a very real danger that those gains could be undermined
by acceleration in unsustainable production and consumption patterns.
On the positive
side, take the EU’s laws on clean air. Every year, several tens of thousands
of people die prematurely in the accession countries because of air pollution,
which has been reaching catastrophic levels. According to an independent study
written for the European Commission [1], at least 15 000 lives will be saved
every year when the EU legislation for clean air is fully implemented in these
countries. EU laws should also lead to better
drinking water quality, cleaner rivers and bathing waters and improved
waste management, with recycling and waste
prevention potentially cutting the amount of waste to landfill by 50 percent.
These gains are by no means guaranteed, however.
One
concern is about the transition periods that the accession countries were
granted for the implementation and enforcement of the EU environmental legislation.
While clearly justified and legitimate in themselves, given the investment
over many years that will be required to implement new legislation, it will
be important to ensure that these transition periods are not misused to gain
short term economic advantages, by delaying the implementation of urgently
needed environmental measures.
For
speedy implementation of EU environmental laws, far greater resources must
be made available to do the job. The rather grubby fights and arguments about
the funding of the enlargement process has been one of the least edifying
aspects of the
process.
The cost of implementing
EU environmental legislation alone for the 10 new Member States plus Bulgaria and Romania has been estimated at between 80 -110 billion
euros over a 15 year period. Under the current EU 2000-2006 budget, they will receive just 22 billion
euro from Structural and Cohesion funds. To put that in perspective, the
costs of German reunification are running at 1.25 trillion euros,
and East Germany still hasn't caught up with
the West.
Unless substantially more
resources are made available, and targeted with the help and support of civil
society groups, hopes that accession countries will be able to “leapfrog ahead”
of the current Member States and set an example for sustainable development,
as DG Environment suggests, seem extremely over-optimistic.
Moreover, some of these
potential gains could well be cancelled out by new threats to the environment
from the enlargement process. One example is the anticipated increase in road transport driven by needs of the Single
Market - the Commission has estimated, for instance, that lorry journeys across
the Czech Republic
could increase by as much as 40
percent after accession. Membership of the CAP is likely
to increase the pressure on farmers to use more pesticides and fertilisers, while EU funding of large infrastructure
is often degrading the very environment that EU standards are supposed to
uphold.
Impact on sustainable development policy making
But while hundreds of reports have been written
on the likely impact of enlargement on the state of environment in the accession
countries themselves, there has been much less analysis of the impact of enlargement
on the process of environmental policy-making in Europe.
Suggestions are
circulating, for example, that the EU will need to pause, or slow down, in
passing new environmental legislation until the accession countries have caught
up. Worse still, some have even argued that we should replace binding legislation
altogether with voluntary agreements. Considering the urgent problems of
toxic chemicals or climate change,
to name just two examples, I think it’s clear that such an approach
would be a major step backwards, and would lead to large scale environmental
destruction, endangering the health of Europe’s citizens and preventing urgently
needed innovation. And we need to be extremely vigilant to make sure that
does not happen.
Sustainable Development Review
Back in 2001, the European Commission
published its sustainable development strategy – a sustainable Europe for a better world – which set out 80 commitments on sustainable development,
on everything from reducing road transport to promoting a sustainable fisheries
policy, and internalising external costs.
Progress on achieving the
objectives set out in the strategy is supposed to be regularly reviewed, along
with a comprehensive assessment at the start of each new Commission’s term
of office. Unfortunately, however, the signs are that the Commission is
neither taking this obligation very seriously, nor is it going to be in a
position to report very much significant progress.
A report from the Green
8 – 8 of the most important European-wide environmental groups – is fairly
damning in its own assessment, published last year.
Here are some of its conclusions.
- The Sustainable Development Strategy as an agenda for real change is not
being maintained, and there’s no consistent or comprehensive approach towards
sustainable development inside the Commission.
- With regard to REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals,
a proposal for a new EU regulatory framework for chemicals adopted 29 October
2003), a reactionary campaign from European industry federations has dominated
the scene so far, with a prominent reflection in the views of several Member
States.
- The Strategy has not had a positive influence on the outcomes of a number
of key directives on energy products taxation, fisheries, public procurement
and environmental liability, all of which have proved to be weak instruments,
with the internal market and competitiveness arguments winning out over the
environmental ones.
I have to say I share that
analysis. I think we have to challenge the business resistance to regulation and acknowledge that while voluntary
instruments and codes of best practice have a place, they cannot replace all
binding targets.
Constitution
So what of the constitution? What does the document
itself, and in particular its rejection by France and the Netherlands,
tell us about the state of environmental policy making in Europe?
A huge amount
of lobbying went on, first of all to try to make the sustainable development
provisions of the constitution stronger than we have in the current treaties.
However, it soon became clear that this was an over-ambitious aim, and that
energy needed to be redirected to ensure that, at the very least, the constitution
was not a step backwards - for example, the two key principles of environmental
policy integration and policy coherence were very nearly lost, and only re-instated
after huge protest. As some key actors who were involved in that process
have written in a recent article in the Environmental Law Network International Review,
“the environmental
organisations
spent a great deal of time running to stand still. It is highly unlikely
that European citizens will feel that the EU has now acquired a stronger legal
base to design policies that will address their fundamental concerns about
the future of the environment, and the social well-.being of present and future
generations.”
DG Environment
itself expressed disappointment over the draft Constitution, with reports from them saying, “unfortunately
the draft treaty does not go far in providing law-makers with
the scope to achieve better results in the field of the environment.”
DG Environment
also failed to get its special protocol on sustainable development attached
to the Treaty, which would have underlined the importance of putting sustainable
development firmly at the core of EU policy-making, and set out firm measures
to ensure that it was not over-ridden in favour of other factors.
To quote from
a letter written on 1 July 2005 by the Secretary General of the European
Environmental Bureau:
“We have strong
indications that President Barroso has decided that the appropriate response
to the political crisis the EU is facing at the moment is to stop initiating
further environmental policies. Since yesterday we understand that also REACH
is in danger for that same reason. Next week he might force a revision (weakening)
of the Commission’s REACH proposals. One the 12th or 20th
of July the Commission will have a general debate about the purpose of the
seven Strategies that the 6th EAP [Environmental Action Programme]
is requiring, and their possible cumulative impact on EU’s competitiveness.
This discussion could lead to a dramatic decision which should be prevented.
Believing that
the support of large parts of the public in the EU can be (re)gained by giving
up EU’s lead role in providing better protection of the public against pollution
and environmental deterioration is, in our view, a big mistake. Quite the
contrary, Eurobarometers continue to show that the European public rates environmental
policies as one of the most important duties of the EU.”
Indeed, from
my perspective, the biggest tragedy of the constitution is that it represents
such a hugely wasted opportunity that
could have been used to put sustainable development at the heart of the EU.
I’m often asked
whether the EU is a positive or negative force for sustainable development.
This is not an easy question, because I believe there is a paradox at the
heart of the European Union. It is summed up in two recent European Summit
objectives. At the Lisbon Summit, the EU adopted a major new objective –
to become the most competitive
economy in the world.
Just a short
time later, under pressure from Greens and others, it adopted a further objective
– to become the most sustainable
economy in the world.
But what EU policy
makers have failed to recognise is that unless the quality and direction of the EU’s economic activity
changes, these two objectives will not be reconcilable. The EU has some of the best environmental
policy-making in the world – but it often fails to achieve the environmental
standards it sets itself – primarily because whenever there is a potential
collision between economic competitiveness on one side and environmental sustainability
on the other, it tends to be the economic priorities that win. Take the proposals
for an EU energy tax, for example, which could be one of the single most effective
ways of internalising environmental costs and shifting towards sustainability
– yet it has been blocked for years, on the grounds that it could damage the
competitiveness of European industry.
At
the same time, I have argued that the EU also faces a crisis of legitimacy
– you
see it in the low-turn out in the European elections, in the ‘no’ vote in
France and the Netherlands, in the rejection of the Euro in those countries
that had a referendum on it, in the initial rejection of the Nice Treaty in
Ireland, in growing euro-scepticism across the EU.
And so I’d make
the case that the EU needs a new Big Idea.
Fifty years ago, its aim was clear – to bring peace to Europe by binding countries together
in an ambitious free trade project. Now that project risks being an end in
itself. The debate on the future of Union has been dominated by “economism” – the idea that the overriding goals of European
integration were economic and that the progress of the EU should be judged
in terms of economic growth and the removal of internal market barriers alone.
People are not clear what the EU is for,
any more. Economism has allowed the EU to avoid many fundamental questions
of political culture and strategic purpose and has contributed to its “crisis
of idealism”, its inability to inspire the mass of citizens with a sense of
enthusiasm and common cause.
A new big idea,
based on a genuine attempt to achieve sustainability in all its facets, could
both revitalise the EU institutions, and re-inspire
that enthusiasm. The EU could be a leader
in renewable energies, it could be a leader in learning to live more lightly
on the planet, it could be a leader in pioneering different economic models
which improve our quality of life without being at the expense of the environment,
future generations, and the poor of both rich and developing worlds
– but it needs to resolve its internal contradictions first.
Yes, the EU needs
to become more democratic and accountable, less bureaucratic and remote: but
it also needs to have a compelling vision of its role and purpose. So I
believe we should demand a new and better constitution that states that the fundamental aim of the new EU is to bring us closer
to the ideal of sustainable development; a constitution that sets out
to build a truly “sustainable Europe”, based on a network of states and agencies
with maximum subsidiarity, the devolution of responsibilities to the closest
possible level to the citizen within an overarching set of high social and
environmental standards, with freedom for member states to go beyond those
standards if they wish.
This would allow the EU to build on its important
successes in environmental and social policy, and to connect Europe’s development to the issues of globalisation,
poverty, ecological degradation, and true security that will dominate the
coming decades. A new Constitution needs to be an occasion for stating what
the EU stands for – as Will Hutton has argued, “Only thus can Europe have any ideological and cultural glue;
without it we are just a commonwealth of states in a customs union.”
Practical Action
Finally, how does all this theory
translate into practical action, particularly in what we
have been talking about during this conference – issues of sustainable food
production and tackling climate change?
Action at EU
level is absolutely essential in order to give us an enabling policy framework
in which to shift to more sustainable consumption and production patterns.
To give just 3 examples:
1. EU legislation would
be key for ecological tax reform, enabling us to internalise environmental
costs - one of the single most important contributions to
achieving a more sustainable world. Ecological tax reform would
automatically lead to less long distance freight, more localised food, less use of fertilizers and pesticides.
2. Legislation at EU level would also be essential in order to introduce regulations
on multinational corporations, since introducing such legislationat national
level would be more difficult, risking relocations and capital flight.The EU
is therefore uniquely well placed to bring forward binding social and environmental
standards, monopoly and competition laws, to break down the inordinate powers
of the corporations.
3.Action at EU level is vital in order to challenge the scope and direction
of the WTO – individual nations standing up at the WTO don’t tend to get heard.
In any case the EU negotiates on behalf of all 25 member states – to get the
re-introduction of protective quotas and tariffs, to ensure the rich don’t keep
exploiting the poor, to get anywhere nearer fairer trade, action at EU level
is essential.
And what is going to bring all this about?
There is an opportunity in the
EU right now as it struggles to find a new role and identity.
The realities of oil peaks and climate change are getting clearer and sharper
all the time.
The demands of the developing
countries are getting more unified, clear; loud and more widely heard. For all its flaws, the
Make Poverty History campaign was an important movement to keep
building upon.
Evidence
of the unsustainability of business as usual is mounting, as Michael Meacher
said: (“Policies for sustainable food systems, national and global”, this
series) oil is running short, water is running short, biodiversity is destroyed.
Our challenge is to wake up political leaders urgently
NOW so they address the changes or else we face a future of much more chaos
as these changes are thrust upon us.
This article is based on a lecture
given at the Sustainable World International Conference 14-15 July 2005 in
UK Parliament, Westminster, London.
Sponsor our
Sustainable World Global Initiative here: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isp/SustainableWorldInitiative.php
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