An Overview of Regulatory Innovation in the European Union

Abstract This chapter reviews the regulatory innovation process in the European Union, with a focus on the environmental sector. It examines the EU documents on regulation and, in particular, the ‘eight pillars of European governance’ listed by the European Commission in its follow-up to the 2001 White Paper on European Governance, as a useful means of categorising the practical consequences which the European Union attaches to the different implications of the governance debate in the EU. It goes on to summarise the initiatives on regulatory innovation as kick-started by the White Paper on Governance, and to map the current state of each of these initiatives. It concludes that no fundamental reform is required, but rather only a slim number of targeted remedies; the only real solution to the regulatory fog is acceptance and deregulation.