For a number of years influential voices in the international environmental policy community, including policy-makers in the European Community, have been calling for the integration of environmental considerations into the making of economic policy. Despite acknowledgements in formal statements of the importance of environmental policy integration in the Community and the attempt by policy-makers to argue that environmental protection was a precondition for sustainable economic growth, the programme to complete the single European market was developed without consideration of its environmental implications. The reasons for this involve a complex mix of intellectual, organisational and political factors. Moreover, the failure to achieve an integration of environmental considerations into the making of economic policy creates its own political dynamics, having three main features: disjointed decision-making in the formulation of common technical standards across the EC; pressure from countries who are environmental leaders to bring laggards up to common standards; and the search by environmental policy-makers for bureaucratic alliances to reinforce their position.