ABSTRACT
It is the task of this book to look at the factors and variables which shape the evolution of policy and its crystallisation in law. Prior to accession to membership of the European Community by the United Kingdom such a task would generally have had a very different character, for reasons which will unfold in this first chapter and beyond. Indeed, much environmental law that is now implemented and enforced in the United Kingdom started life as a policy ambition of the European Community. Nevertheless there are some laws which do not owe their parentage to such policy, directly at least. Within this framework and its European emphasis there is a fundamental concern for the way in which policy's dynamic character sees its evolution into law and, in turn, its enforcement in the United Kingdom. A major concern for this purpose is the extent to which member states of the European Community may be seen to have discretion in the style, extent and emphasis of their transposition of Community law. In so far as any discretion does exist here it arises from the fundamental status of the legislative instruments of the Community. More particularly, the main instrument of environmental law, the directive, often allows that discretion in transposition.
