ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the expansion of EC competence in the field of the environment has been an exercise in ‘Community opportunism’. The original Rome Treaty contained no authorising provision for an environmental policy, but it has nevertheless-through its range, degree of public support, and the legal instruments it has generated-become one of the more successful of EC policies.1 Its development in both the domestic and international arena has inevitably come at the direct expense of state competence. The development of the EC agenda for environmental protection has for a number of member states2-particularly those, such as the UK, that are perceived as less ‘green’—largely provided the national agenda for environmental policy.
