Environmental Pasts/Environmental Futures in Post-Socialist Europe

Abstract

This contribution focuses on the limits of European Union programmes and accession practices on environmental policies and performance in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, we document some of the ways in which state socialist and post-socialist environmental conditions, practices and policies are shaping, and in turn being shaped by, the path of accession and integration. We focus on the diverse and changing patterns of air, water and soil quality in Central and Eastern Europe, the contested nature of new environmental policies, the environmental consequences of economic change, and the sustainability of emerging environmental regimes. The contribution concludes with several questions about the consequences of new state membership for future EU environmental policies.