From the editor

When I first began working on EU environmental policy, it proved a significant challenge. Like many others, I came to the subject having first become familiar with environmental policy from a national perspective. EU environmental policy is of a very different character. It is remarkably wide-ranging, but is still not comprehensive – with gaps that national policies need to fill; it can leave much up to the Member States to work out as they implement EU law. It is also developed in a different way. There is no government that crafts legislation and sees it through a parliamentary adoption process. EU environmental law is proposed by the European Commission, but adopted by the European Parliament and Council. Law is hammered out in a political forge with participants from 27 countries. This is a valuable foundation, but can introduce all sorts of inconsistencies and problems of clarity. This is one of the challenges of implementation and provides fertile ground for those of us that analyse policy development and implementation.

This Manual provides the reader with an overview of this interesting, complex, not infrequently changing and sometimes inconsistent policy landscape, as well as a fair measure of detail. Importantly, we hope that it allows the reader to see how the development of this landscape has changed – what drove early EU environmental policy is often quite different from what drives it now. At the same time, looking across all EU environmental law, one can distinguish certain themes that recur from one decade to the next, with interesting variations. These change within the history of a single measure as well as in the overviews of broader areas of policy.
 
Editing such an extensive publication has been (and continues to be) a major undertaking. However, it is also a great privilege. I would, in particular, like to thank all of my colleagues, who have contributed to this Manual both today and during the preceding years. I am grateful to all for their hard work.
 
Dr Andrew Farmer
Editor in Chief