ABSTRACT
Today, environment policy is seen as one of the most effective in the EU, covering issues from air, water and ground pollution or chemical registration to eco-labels and climate change. But it was not a priority for the EU's founding fathers. There was no provision in the Rome treaty for a common policy on the environment. The gap, reflecting the low level of environmental awareness in the 1950s, was filled by the Single European Act of 1987, whose Article 25 sets out aims for action on the environment to ensure a prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources and to contribute towards protecting human health. Nevertheless, from 1973 onwards the council adopted a series of action programmes which gradually broadened out from immediate responses to serious pollution problems to an overall preventive strategy for safeguarding the environment and natural resources.
