Ambition or Diminution? Analysing EU Environmental Policy Over Time

There has been a dominant assumption in studies of European Union (EU) environmental policy that this sector is both expansionist and ambitious. However, now that the environmental acquis has become well established there is scope for consolidation of extant policies with fewer new proposals being bought forward. Moreover, it has been suggested that the ambition of EU environmental policy is waning in response to a range of economic, ideological and national pressures. These developments raise a methodological challenge: how do we capture and explain changes in the density and intensity of environmental policy? This paper seeks to address these questions by presenting the findings of a large n study that evaluates both the number and ambition of EU level legislation over a ten-year period. The findings suggest a diminution in EU environmental policy ambition over time. The analysis of legislation is complemented by a series of elite interviews with key decision-makers, to uncover their perspective of how and why EU environmental policy has shifted in the last decade. The paper makes a major and important empirical contribution to the field, by presenting a comprehensive analysis of EU legislation since 2004. It also proposes a new methodological approach for analysing EU environmental policy over time.