ABSTRACT
That Britain’s environmental policy is being increasingly defined and transformed by European Union priorities, policies and implementation procedures is now little in doubt. A second-generation EU nation in an extended family that has now seen four periods of enlargement, Britain entered the Union at the time of the inception of EU environmental policy and its gradual integration into national law and practice. Given Britain’s long-standing commitment to environmental concerns, the process of Europeanisationinvolving not only the adaptation of national policy styles and agendas to European prerogatives but also their gradual convergence and, potentially, their eventual replacement by a common European form-was always going to have important consequences for the British way of going about things.
