Sustainability, subsidiarity and deregulation: New directions in EU environmental policy

The adoption of sustainable development as a guiding principle in European Union (EU) environmental policy has coincided with a growing influence of the subsidiarity principle and the deregulation doctrine. Both show areas of overlap and compatibility with the basic tenets of sustainable development and could in principle contribute to a strengthening of environmental protection in the EU. However, their influence to date has mainly been negative. One problem is that while ideas such as ‘action as close to the citizen as possible’ and the application of a market‐based approach sound attractive, especially considering the shortcomings of EU environmental policy to date, political and economic realities mean that subsidiarity and deregulation are two‐edged swords, as the example of the EU's response to the climate change issue demonstrates. The subsidiarity principle is being exploited in the interest of national sovereignty, and the change to a more market‐based approach for environmental instruments has mainly focused on self‐regulatory tools with dubious effectiveness. In general, EU environmental policy has lost momentum in recent years and there has been little progress with the integration of environmental concerns into other policy areas, beyond marginal adjustments.