Implementation effectiveness of EU environmental policy

This chapter evaluates the effectiveness of the implementation of European Union (EU) environmental policy. It presents the institutional framework in which the implementation of European policies takes place. The chapter discusses some broad trends related to the actual degree of implementation problems and the extent to which these problems are actually politicised. There is evidence that implementation deficits in the environmental field are more pronounced than in other policy fields of the EU, and that the implementation effectiveness across member states does not fully correspond with the observed patterns of ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ during the stage of policy formulation.