Abstract
The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is the official Environmental Management System (EMS) issued by the European Union (EU). Italy is the country where EMAS is most widespread, accounting for over 1000 registered organizations. Since entry into the force of the Regulation in 1997, the number of registrations has constantly grown until 2008, when the figures started to drop. The phenomena are due to both the decrease of the annual registration rate and the lack of renewals. According to the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), in recent years, an increasing number of organizations decided to withdraw from EMAS registration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons of this negative trend. The first step consisted of a literature review concerning the main barriers, difficulties, and costs incurred by EMAS-registered organizations. Subsequently, this information was integrated with data about the evolution of EMAS registrations and the results of a previous survey, which involved the entire population of registered firms. The present exploratory research highlighted economic and operational domains concerning the cancellation trends that deserve a deeper investigation, which will be conducted through a questionnaire addressed to Italian firms that did not renew the registration in the last lustrum. The intended output will allow us to identify stakeholders’ priority intervention areas in order to suggest an operative strategy to reduce EMAS cancellation rates, addressed to Member States (MS) Competent Bodies.
Highlights
Nowadays firms that want to compete in the global market need to fulfill the requests of several stakeholder categories, both internal and external [1,2,3]
We found that 43.3% of the organizations mainly belong to five specific sectors defined by NACE (Nomenclature Des Activités Économiques Dans Les Communautés Européennes) codes (Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006):
Even if Italy represents the leading country in terms of Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) registrations, starting from 2012, a negative trend in registrations was observed for the first time
Summary
Nowadays firms that want to compete in the global market need to fulfill the requests of several stakeholder categories, both internal and external [1,2,3]. Three main families of instruments are available to manage environmental resources toward sustainability: command and control, market-based, and voluntary instruments [8,9] The latter category indicates a proactive attitude towards the environment as a critical factor for firms to maintain competitiveness [10]. The main international reference standards for EMSs are ISO 14001 Certification and the European EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) Regulation [14,15,16]. Daddi et al (2014) investigated the effect of ISO 14001 and EMAS in terms of the reduction of environmental impacts Both systems have a positive impact in energy-intensive industries. ISO 14001 is more effective in the short term, while EMAS firms obtain better results in the long run [21]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
