2014 Volume 2014 Issue 34 Pages 339-358
The European Union (EU) has been proactive in environmental protection and conservation within and outside Europe. However, among various policy realms, the most severe non-compliance by the EU member states exists in the realm of environmental protection and conservation. In this policy realm, nature protection and biodiversity conservation constitute the largest portion of non-compliance by the member states. In addition, in this policy area, development of common rules entailing transfer of member states competence has been obstructed continuously. This phenomenon contradicts with an existing potent theoretical account that stresses the importance of the demand for a single common rule at the EU level from non-state actors, and autonomous activities of EU supranational organizations seeking to attain transfer of member states competence at the EU level. The theory emphasizes that this collaboration between non-state actors and supranational organization will activate both negative and positive integration in a sustained fashion. Yet it focuses primarily on the cases of negative integration, including deregulation and market liberalization. Although we can observe that apparently quite similar factors have worked in the case of EU nature and biodiversity policy, this policy area has not experienced transfer of member states competence. This article addresses why and how this has happened and provides implications contributing to theorization of positive integration.
This article traces initiation, adoption, implementation, and enforcement processes of the 1979 Birds Directive and the 1992 Habitats Directive, the common rules constituting the core of EU nature and biodiversity policy. The analysis of these two directives reveals the limitations of the existing theoretical framework primarily concerned with negative integration. Although the Birds and Habitats Directives were both initiated by supranational organizations in response to the strong pressures from citizens and environmental organizations, due to the distributional conflicts among the member states, the Commission was unable to play a role as policy entrepreneur. Again, responding to the demand from environmental organizations, supranational organizations, especially the European Court of Justice, enforced the Birds and Habitats Directives against the member states from the perspective of strict environmental protection. Yet this aroused oppositions from the member states and led to the revision of the common rules on nature and biodiversity, thus hindering transfer of member states competence. This strict enforcement has reinforced the confrontation between environmental interests represented by environmental organizations and supranational organizations, and economic interests supported by the member states and firms, thus further obstructing transfer of member states competence.
