European Union Environmental Policy after the Nice Summit

The primary rationale for the new treaty was to deal with matters that were unresolved by the previous amendment, the 1999 Amsterdam Treaty, and prepare the European Union (EU) for enlargement. If and when it is ratified, the Treaty of Nice will be the fourth major reform of the founding treaties of the EU since 1957. The Treaty follows the pattern of previous treaty amendments (Jordan, 2002) in that it was not negotiated for environmental reasons (although environmentalists were quick to submit proposals) (European Environment Bureau (EEB), 2000a), but it could significantly affect the way in which the EU makes environmental policy. Unlike the 1987 Single Act and the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, both of which fundamentally altered the ‘rules for making EU environmental rules’ (Weale, 1996), the new treaty will only make a number of fairly minor changes to the actual wording of the environmental sections of the Treaty. But it may have important indirect effects on the dynamics of policy-making, although these could take a lot longer to feed through.