Locating EC Environmental Law

Abstract

Despite prognoses of marginalisation, European Community environmental law has been strengthened, both through Treaty developments, revitalisation of secondary legislation and purposive judgments of the European Court. Concepts once confined to its Environmental Title, such as subsidiarity and integrating environmental considerations into other policy areas, now govern the Community as a whole, being joined and strengthened in this by the new Community objective of promoting sustainable development. This article charts the evolution of these concepts, in effect the ‘greening’ of EC governance, and also explores the extent to which a mainstream European concept, citizenship, might in turn be greened. The article argues that sustainable development considerations are emerging as a central organising rationale for the Community as a whole. However, EC ‘sustainable development’ law continues insufficiently to capture environmental values or extended environmental meanings (such as of ‘the European Union’s environment’), and fails to overcome many of the central difficulties associated with the earlier development of the Community’s ‘environmental’ jurisprudence.