ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the reception and influence of European Union policies in Finnish agri-environmental policies and strategies. The agricultural policy of the European Community was in its early decades characterised by purely productivist goals and measures. The processes of European integration are mainly seen as institutional and regulatory responses to more or less specific Union rules, at the national or the local level. The general environmental attitudes of farmers in Finland have been rather stable during the first half of the 1990s. The chapter presents an analysis of the Finnish agri-environmental policy situation by focusing on a new member state’s response to the Council Regulation No. 2078/92, that is on the Finnish Agri-environmental Programme for the years 1995-99. The Finnish agri-environmental programme must be seen as a clear transition from communicative agri-environmental regulation to economic agri-environmental regulation. The Finnish programme may even lead to substantial changes in the farmers’ behaviour towards less polluting practices.
