EC Law, the Environment and Consumers: Addressing the Challenge of Incorporating an Environmental Dimension to Consumer Protection at Community Level

Abstract

The principal objective of this paper is to stimulate debate about the current state of the relationship and tensions between consumer and environmental protection policies at Community level. By virtue of the constitutional changes to Community Law introduced by the Single European Act 1986 (SEA) and the Treaty on European Union 1992 (TEU), the European Community (EC) has committed itself to re-evaluating its core, fundamental aim of attaining completion of market integration. The EC is now compelled to address whether the development of open and free market conditions ultimately serves the best interests and priorities of its inhabitants and whether its original goals adequately internalise their environmental concerns and demands. This paper aims to assess critically to what extent EC policy and law have responded to these new challenges and requirements by focusing, firstly, on the caselaw of the European Court of Justice and, secondly, on policy innovations introduced by and constraints facing the EC legislative institutions. Ten years on from the SEA, it appears that the Community has barely started to confront the issue of the consumer-environment interrelationship, with the result that political and legal developments have been unclear and often contradictory. The Community must begin to match its rhetoric with definitive action.