ABSTRACT
It is widely recognised that the EU is having an increasing impact on policy making in the member states. This is especially true for environmental policy, partly because national standards laid down in law are being questioned and in some respects harmonised and partly because the debate within member states about the aims, content and settings of environmental policy - i.e. what could and should be achieved by which instruments - has been influenced by policy developments at the European level. One feature of this debate has been the search for alternatives to the traditionally dominant "command and control" approach in the EU as well as in national environmental policy. However, since the command and control approach is closely linked to a state centred vision of co-ordination or at least state influenced forms of decision making by individual as well as collective actors, the questioning of this traditional approach implies the necessity to consider modern non-hierarchical forms of governance. The crucial question in this context is therefore: is the command and control approach still appropriate in a modern "risk" society or should one be seeking another approach in order to achieve governability?
