The Proliferation of Environmental Concepts in EU Policymaking: Serious Omnipresence, Diluted Focus, or Excessive Rhetoric?

Once upon a time, the conceptual foundation of environmental policy-making in the EU was comparatively parsimonious. For decades, environmental policy integration (EPI) and sustainable development (SD) dominated the discourse on how to cope with environmental problems, and the two concepts even found their way into EU treaties. Today, the EU and its Member States juggle with about half a dozen comprehensive concepts that target several sectors, if not the entire economy: Although SD was more or less abandoned for the sake of green/sustainable growth, green jobs and the green economy in the Europe 2020 process, the EU will also have to address the post-2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Apart from these “conceptual top dogs”, the EU has also developed (or is about to develop) strategies/policies on a circular economy, a low-carbon economy 2050, energy/resource efficiency, and on the bioeconomy. We briefly portray the genesis and the main features of these guiding concepts in EU policymaking and we explore in how far they complement or compete with each other contents-wise. We then review how the EU attempts to implement these concepts and in how far the respective governance setups are mutually supportive. Finally, we intend to discuss what the proliferation of so many comprehensive environmental concepts signifies for policymaking in the EU. Is it a serious omnipresence of environmental concerns on various political agendas (and therefore perhaps a late success of the EPI and SD concepts)? Is it a sign for an EU environmental policy that has lost focus? Or is it excessive environmental rhetoric hardly relevant for policymaking?