This book explains the functioning of shared competences in environmental protection by focusing on member states' interaction with the EU framework. By studying this interaction, Squintani reveals room for improving the level of environmental protection, legal certainty, and efficiency of the system for environmental protection envisaged under the EU Treaties. Accordingly, this book makes a contribution to EU environmental law and policy, but also should be of interest to constitutional lawyers more generally and to scholars working in any field of EU policy and law in which minimum harmonisation is used. Thanks to its focus and clear, accessible prose, this book is also valuable additional reading material for environmental law courses, and to those involved in decision-making in the EU.

The study is part of the ongoing Fitness Check of EU consumer and marketing law, focusing on the Consumer Sales and Guarantees (CSG) Directive 1999/44/EC which is a minimum harmonisation Directive. The study assessed the costs and benefits of Member States going beyond the minimum rules laid down by the Directive, as well as the impacts of potential full harmonisation and alignment of EU rules for different sales channels (distance versus face-to-face sales channels). It specifically focused on four elements of the CSG Directive, namely, the two-year legal guarantee (longer in five Member States), notification obligation within a specific period (not applicable in seven Member States), the six-month period for the reversal of burden of proof (longer in three Member States) and a free choice of remedies (applicable in five Member States) as opposed to a hierarchy. The study finds strong benefits of alignment of the rules for face-to-face and distance sales. Impacts of harmonisation and alignment are likely to vary across Member States. Alignment of rules for face-to-face and distance channels and full harmonisation would have an overall positive impact on consumers and businesses in the Single Market.

Explores the dynamic relationship between courts and legislatures in the governance of the EU internal market.

What does EU law truly mean for the member states? This book presents the first encompassing and in-depth empirical study of the effects of 'voluntaristic' and (partly) 'soft' EU policies in all 15 member states. The authors examine 90 case studies across a range of EU Directives and shed light on burning contemporary issues in political science, integration theory, and social policy. They reveal that there are major implementation failures and that, to date, the European Commission has not been able adequately to perform its control function.

EU ENVIRONMENTAL LAW provides a detailed insight into the subject by an author with 30 years' experience of working within the European Commission.

This Open Access book offers a novel view on the benefits of a lasting variation between the member states in the EU. In order to bring together thirty very different European states and their citizens, the EU will have to offer more scope for variation. Unlike the existing differentiation by means of opt-outs and deviations, variation is not a concession intended to resolve impasses in negotiations; it is, rather, a different structuring principle. It takes differences in needs and in democratically supported convictions seriously. A common core remains necessary, specifically concerning the basic principles of democracy, rule of law, fundamental rights and freedoms, and the common market. By taking this approach, the authors remove the pressure to embrace uniformity from the debate about the EU’s future. The book discusses forms of variation that fall both within and outside the current framework of European Union Treaties. The scope for these variations is mapped out in three domains: the internal market; the euro; and asylum, migration and border control.

This thought-provoking book offers a cross-cutting debate on EU environmental legislation from a legal perspective focussing on key themes such as regulatory instrument choice, the coherency of law, and enforceable commitments. Based on thorough