ABSTRACT
What does the case of environmental policy tell us about the evolution of rules in the European Union (EU) and what are the implications of the development of European environmental policy more generally for our understanding of EU rule-making institutions? This chapter advances the argument that environmental policy displays the policy-making process of the EU as a decision system characterized by the principle of concurrent majorities. A system of concurrent majorities exists when agreement is needed by a high proportion of participants in a set of decision-making institutions before a policy is adopted. Thus, in the case of environmental policy, agreement needs to be secured both within and between key institutional actors (the Commission, the Council, the Parliament and the Court), as well as with the functional constituencies of important interest groups. The result is a ‘joint-decision trap’ (Scharpf, 1988) in which the status quo is given privileged place and policy lourdeur (Wallace, 1994, p80): important policy measures are not adopted, or adopted only in sub-optimal form.
