No other European laws are so frequently violated as environmental directives. This informative and illuminating volume explains why member states have repeatedly failed to comply with European Environmental Law. It challenges the assumption that non-compliance is merely a southern problem. By critically comparing and analyzing Spain and Germany, the volume demonstrates that both northern leaders and southern laggards face compliance problems if a European policy is not compatible with domestic regulatory structures. The North-South divide is therefore much more complex than previously thought. Examining each country’s capabilities of shaping European policies according to its environmental concerns and economic interests, the book debates the possible outcomes if the European Union does not come to terms with the leader-laggards dynamics in environmental policy-making. It will be a prime resource for anyone concerned with environmental policy-making and law, particularly within the EU, as well as those interested in environmental and political geography.

Which types of regulatory reinvention work and which don't? This book identifies innovative regulatory best practice internationally in a number of specific contexts, providing policy prescriptions which would better enable agencies to fulfil their regulatory missions.

From its antecedents in the 1950s, successive forms of European integration were intended to be leaderless. They have succeeded only too well in demonstrating that much can be achieved without sustained leadership. The attachment to national sovereignty of most of the European elites and mass populations has meant that confederalism has been implicitly accepted for the foreseeable future. This book attempts to clarify three clusters of issues. First, as European integration has advanced, who has provided the impetus? Particular insiders have episodically exerted decisive innovative influence, despite the need to conciliate the jealous champions of national sovereignty. Three case studies are offered: economic and monetary policy, environmental policy and technology policy. The second part examines why the European Union is currently leaderless. The weakened Commission and the increasingly assertive European Council and Council of Ministers have contended for control of agenda-setting but it is in the sphere of foreign and security policy that the EU's logic of leaderlessness has been most conspicuous. Finally, reduced capacity of the Franco-German tandem to offer acceptable leadership and British incapacity to join or replace them in providing overall leadership is also discussed.

Since the 1970s, the European Union has created a system of environmental governance in Europe. This work seeks to understand this system both at the European level and at the level of member states.

Pioneers, Leaders and Followers in Multilevel and Polycentric Climate Governance focuses on pioneers, leaders and followers as central drivers for international climate change governance innovations. A burgeoning literature has identified pioneers and leaders as central drivers for international climate change governance innovations. A wide range of actors (such as international organisations, the European Union, NGOs, corporations and cities) have been identified as potential and actual climate pioneers and/or leaders. Despite this, much of the academic debate is still largely focused on states. To address this research gap, this volume focuses primarily on non-state actors in different multilevel and polycentric governance structures. The chapters offer a critical analysis of the different types of actors (e.g. the EU, corporate actors, NGOs and cities) who can act as pioneers and/or leaders at different levels of climate governance (including the international, supranational, regional, national and local) encompassing non-state and state actors. The volume provides a clear conceptualisation of pioneers, leaders and followers while assessing their motives, capacities, styles and strategies. It examines critically the dynamic interrelationship between leaders and pioneers on the one hand, and followers and laggards on the other. Moreover, it analyses how multilevel and polycentric climate governance structures enable and/or constrain climate pioneers, leaders and followers. This volume will be of great use to scholars of environmental governance, climate change, and international governance. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Environmental Politics.

This text brings together work on EU environmental policy. Incorporating a range of case studies, it explores the links between levels of governance and the environment in a number of policy areas.

Why do some states enact stronger pollution control progammes than others? And, do stronger controls have identifiable impacts on environmental quality in these states? This work seeks to answer these question by means of combining data, methods and theory from the natural and social sciences.