Taking Advantage of Flexibility in Implementing EU Environmental Law

Abstract EU environmental law can allow flexibility in the way that it is implemented by the Member States. It can, for example, set an overall environmental objective for which Member States are free to adopt any instrument necessary to reach this target. As a result, Member States can adopt measures which vary in their efficiency (such as costs to businesses), which could reflect national legal constraints, pre-existing practices, etc. In order to assess which instruments to use, Member States should undertake some form of impact assessment, analysing the costs and benefits of different options. However, such analyses are not yet widespread and can be limited in the methods they use, such as in their involvement of stakeholders and use of costs and benefits analyses. In order for efficient and effective national legislative implementation it is, therefore, necessary for Member States to improve these analytical processes at different stages in the policy/legal cycle.