Introduction: European Union Environmental Policy – Actors, Institutions and Policy Processes

At its founding in 1957, the European Union (EU) had no environmental policy, no environmental bureaucracy and no environmental laws. The European Economic Community (EEC), as it then was, was primarily an intergovernmental agreement between six like-minded states to boost economic prosperity and repair political relations in war-torn Europe. When Britain joined in 1973, the EEC had adopted a very limited number of environmental policies, but they were primarily directed at safeguarding human health and removing internal barriers to trade.