"The Europeanization of national environmental policy: A comparative analysis"

The aim of this [paper] is to document the Europeanization of national policy since 1970 in ten member states, namely Austria, Eire, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Given that our aim is to explore how common policies adopted by the EU are refracted by different national institutional forms, we have opted to focus on one sector, namely environmental policy, rather than looking at the Europeanization of several sectors in one single country, or a mixture of sectors and countries. Our selection of countries constitutes a representative same of "new" (i.e., post-1995) and older member states, environmental "leaders" and "laggards," and northern and southern states, to understand the main dynamics at work. By national "policy," we mean the content of policies (the paradigms of action, the objectives, and the policy instruments), the legal and administrative structures that that have been established to oversee them, and the dominant style in which policy is made and implemented