Europäische Umweltpolitik. Die Umweltunion als Chance für die materielle und institutionelle Weiterentwicklung der europäischen Integration [European Environmental Policy. Environmental Union as a Chance for the Material and Institutional Advancement of European Integration]

Citation

Simonis, U.E. (2002), "Europäische Umweltpolitik. Die Umweltunion als Chance für die materielle und institutionelle Weiterentwicklung der europäischen Integration [European Environmental Policy. Environmental Union as a Chance for the Material and Institutional Advancement of European Integration]", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 335-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2002.29.4.335.2

There are books that are an intellectual gain and a literary pleasure to read. We wish to report here on a book of this sort, originally a dissertation (at the University of St Gallen), which would balance at least one (German) habilitation thesis. Those who take little time for reading may be tempted to say this book is much too long. Others will note, and comment, that this book is two books in one – and it is, after all: a theoretical introduction to problems of international decision‐making, an historical review of the development of Europe from the European Coal and Steel Community to the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties, an overview of the programs and the legal foundations of European environmental policy, and an evaluation of the successes and failures the latter has met with thus far – this being the first part (Chapters 1 to 4 of the present book).

The second part (Chapters 5 to 6 and the prospective outlook of the present book) considers the European Union’s lack of ecological maturity. In this part, environmental union, as a further material and institutional step on the road to European integration, takes on the shape of a fascinating, crucial question, and ecological reorientation becomes the starting point for the future of the new, larger Europe.

It seems to me that the author must have found the leitmotif for this imposing work in a speech by Iring Fetscher: “If Europe is in fact to be something more than or different from a customs union, or at best a unified economic area closed off from the outer world, it will be necessary to pay more attention to the unease engendered among parts of the population by the process of [its] economic‐technical dynamism” (Fetscher, 1995). Wepler takes this unease as his credo: His concern is to track down the determining material and institutional characteristics and relations in the European Union (EU) and to recognise the conditions under which the EU can contribute to sustainable development in Europe (on the approach see p. 7, on the result see pp. 443ff.). This, the author notes, requires the EU to widen the historically developed primacy accorded to the economy and to include an ecological dimension, an ecological imperative: environmental union!

The author leaves us in no doubt that progress has been made in European integration. But he also makes it perfectly clear that Europe is not yet environmentally sustainable. The EU’s environmental policy, he notes, is unable to actively influence the complex factors leading to the rise of environmental problems and to act on economic‐policy decisions in such a way as to actually reduce the consumption of natural resources and to avoid excessive interventions in natural ecology. “Instead of sending out anticipatory control signals, regulatory interventions undertaken after the fact block or delay already existing investment and consumption planning” (p. 282).

The weak material position of European environmental policy is mirrored in an institutional anchoring of environmental protection that is every bit as weak. Because the EU has been and continues to be (mis)understood as an “economic promotion function,” the author writes, the criteria and procedures designed to weigh environmental demands against economic interests are engineered in such a way as to constantly place environmental protection in a difficult position. Often environmental demands are seen as exceptions in need of justification: “The keywords ‘ecological challenge of modernity’, ‘ecological immaturity of the economy’, ‘instrumental and regulatory deficit’, and ‘deregulation rollback’ circumscribe the problematic that must be faced by any reorientation of environmental and economic policy within the EU aimed at a sustainable development of economy and society” (p. 285).

Wepler does just this, and does so in a scientifically exacting and morally convincing fashion. As the material basis of the reorientation of the EU toward an environmental union, he describes, and avows his commitment to, the “strong sustainability” rule: In principle, the relationship between natural capital and man‐made capital is complementary and not substitutive. And what is needed to realise a sustainable mode of production is not only to make efficiency gains (the summary verdict of the neoliberals) but equally to stabilise the material extension of the economy and to reduce, in absolute terms, the quantitative exploitation of nature and the burdening of the environment (see in particular p. 298).

The author draws a thoughtful conclusion from this strategic consideration: “A policy geared solely to optimising economic processes and which fails to acknowledge the qualitative effects of growing economic output is encouraging precisely the economic designs … that are jeopardising nature’s life‐support systems” (p. 302).

In the context of its future policy, Wepler thus sees the EU faced with the task of more consistently formulating, and more successfully translating into practice, its commitment to sustainability than it has in the past. This can and must find expression in revised treaty targets and constitutional principles that serve as a material point of departure for a policy of sustainable development. The task would then be to derive from this enlargement, and concretization, of the catalogue of goals, and a set of binding fundamental principles and rules. These, in turn, would lead to the formulation of the corresponding measures and programs in the various policy fields of the EU, including new political instruments such as environmental taxes and emission certificates. The fundamental issue of “subsidiarity versus centralisation” is thus the focal point for defining the institutional building blocks for a European environmental union, a task which Wepler undertakes in the second part of his book.

A clear‐cut and explicit division of responsibilities between the Union and its member states (and regions) must serve to impart to environmental protection in Europe more efficiency and effectiveness and to cast sustainability in the role of a strategic topic. Focusing EU policy on coming to terms with the ecological challenge, on strong sustainability, the author is convinced, would open up ways to strengthen the fundamental legitimacy of European integration (which is often perceived as insufficient) and to bring the Union closer to its citizens.

The future Europe must be seen as a community of shared values and given a shape reflecting this understanding (see in particular p. 310). Well said, no doubt. But who actually is to be responsible for defining the values, the ecological dimension?

Moral imagination is the workmanly sine qua non of any great writer; and this is certainly also a precondition for any great scholarly project. Wepler’s moral imagination leads us up to an institutional innovation: the representative‐democratic political system of the member states and the EU’s political structures and mechanisms must, he writes, be modified and amended in such a way as to ensure that the future’s legitimate interests in preserving nature are acknowledged and enforced (see in particular p. 34). What the author is looking for here is the custodian who, independent of short‐term interests, represents the concerns of future generations and is able to act as a counterpole to the dominant particularist interests. As far as the future is concerned, the Europeans are no democrats (either).

These demands could, in Wepler’s view, be met by a “Senate for nature and the environment,” to be inserted as a new organ – beside Commission, Council of Ministers, and Parliament – into the institutional structure of the EU, a sort of institutional analogue to the basic substantive principles of a sustainable development in Europe discussed above.

Wepler makes very concrete proposals on the position of this Senate within the framework of the existing EU institutions (above all see pp. 433ff.), on its tasks, its makeup, the selection of its members (see the organigram on p. 437). The author here assigns great significance to internationally oriented scientists with interdisciplinary talents, to the “science of sustainability,” to the moral integrity of natural and social sciences. This may be an obvious conclusion, but is it also a realistic expectation?

Well, first of all, as many scientists as possible would have to systematically read and discuss this fundamental work (and other relevant works, see below). Then, however, it would be time for the new Europe to take up the values and principles of sustainability and subsidiarity and to self‐consciously defend them in the less visionary framework of day‐to‐day life. Is this a weak, vain hope, or a strong, seminal one?