Europe '92. Decentralizing environmental policy in the single market

✍ Scribed by Horst Siebert

• Book ID: 104743301
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 943 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0924-6460
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00367921

✦ Synopsis

The creation of the EC's internal market by the end of 1992 appears to necessitate a harmonization of environmental policies in the European Community. Against this background, the paper analyzes the options for decentralizing environmental policy in Europe and indicates some limitations of this approach.

It is shown that, in the case of stationary sources, a harmonization is not required whereas, in the case of international spillovers and global environmental systems, a decentralization of policies is possible if countries can agree on international diffusion norms or national emission quantities, respectively. A harmonization seems to be unavoidable if product norms have to be applied, e.g. in the case of pollutants in consumption goods. Generally, however, price instruments should be used wherever possible, since they allow for a regional differentiation of environmental qualities without segmenting European markets.