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The Future of the Cardiff process

2 Strenghts and weaknesses of the cardiff process to date

2.1 Overview of Cardiff process

2.1.1 Strengths and benefits of the Cardiff process

Among the particular strengths identified in the strategy development under the Cardiff process are the following.

An increased understanding and sense of ownership of environmental issues in some Council formations. Hitherto sectoral Council formations were rarely exposed to any great degree to broader environmental requirements. Even where there have not yet been clear and positive outcomes from the Cardiff process, many observers and participants believe that it has generated a greater understanding, and, in time, possibly a sense of ownership as well.

Cardiff has facilitated the development of integrative mechanisms – the use of joint Councils, joint working groups and specialist environment units are positive features of the Cardiff process. This is discussed further in the latter part of this Chapter, with particular reference to the Transport Council’s integrative activities.

Work on sectoral indicators has progressed substantially since the initiation of the Cardiff progress. The TERM indicator set used to support work on Transport is also discussed later in this Chapter.

Linkages to other policy review cycles were initially not well developed. However, the Fisheries report makes a clear reference to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) 2002 review, providing an important opening for a future and more developed strategy to exploit.

In spite of the various weaknesses in the process, many of which are touched on in what follows, the Cardiff process can be seen as a learning process. That is, even where strategies have thus far failed to agree on concrete and positive action, awareness raising has been an important precursor which may well lead to more substantive developments in the future. Equally, where strategies have hitherto developed along separate lines, there are now greater opportunities for comparison and coordination, which are discussed in later chapters.

Aside from effects on the Council itself, our various analyses have identified a number of areas in which the Cardiff process has had positive influences on the workings of the Commission and of the Member States themselves. These relate particularly to the establishment of new integration units, committees and procedures which appear to be directly associated with the Cardiff process, and sometimes in areas where integration was previously very weak. This is a valuable reciprocal process, which should be encouraged through the continuing development of the Cardiff requirements.

2.1.2 Weaknesses and drawbacks

The Göteborg European Council in June 2001 was intended to be the deadline for the presentation of completed integration strategies, and an occasion for an overall stocktaking of the Cardiff process as a whole. In the event, this review did not take place, largely because the strategies for the ‘third wave’ Councils (General Affairs, Ecofin and Fisheries) had not at that stage been completed. Heads of Government therefore invited the Council to ‘finalise and further develop’ their strategies, and present the results to the Barcelona summit in March 2002.

However, following the end of the Swedish Presidency, the momentum of the Cardiff process faltered further. In five of the six European Councils since Göteborg, neither the Cardiff process nor individual Council strategies were mentioned in the summit conclusions. At Barcelona in March 2002, it was noted that the Ecofin and General Affairs Councils had presented strategies, and that a Fisheries strategy would be forthcoming. However, the Fisheries strategy is still unpublished; the Ecofin strategy did not cover all the aspects which might have been desirable (see Box 1); and of the several reviews of earlier strategies promised for 2002, only those of the Competitiveness (Internal Market) and Transport Councils has appeared at the time of writing.

This slowdown in activity contrasts with the considerable progress that had been made during a comparatively long ‘run’ of sympathetic presidencies from 1998 to 2001 – including those of the UK, Finland, Austria, Germany and Sweden. This serves to highlight the danger that an informal process such as Cardiff, periodically steered by the European Council, can be derailed if the Presidencies do not give sufficient priority to the topic. It emphasises the need to embed the process more firmly, for example in a longer-term work programme for the Council.

Although Cardiff is focused on the activities of the Council, it is clear that little progress can be made without the active and supportive involvement of the Commission. As set out in the Treaty, the role of the Council is primarily to react to proposals initiated by the Commission, and thus it is ill-equipped on its own to gather data, develop indicators, engage in consultations with stakeholders and consider alternative policy options. Accordingly, the Commission has become progressively more involved in the development of almost all of the Cardiff strategies. Indeed, in their separate conclusions on integration, Councils have commonly asked the Commission to undertake further work to take the strategies forward.

However, this dependence on the Commission has in some cases given rise to tensions over the development of policy priorities. As part of the Prodi reforms, the Commission now has its own procedures for strategic programming, and the priorities of particular directorates-general may cut across those of their associated Councils. This appears to have happened in relation to the transport strategy (see case study below). Moreover, under the system of Activity-Based Management introduced in 2001 as part of the Kinnock reforms to the Commission, directorates-general are explicitly required to cut out activities for which resources are not available.

This gives rise to the possibility of conflicting priorities within limited resources. Resolutions of the Development and Energy Councils respectively have drawn attention to the need for additional resources to be made available to the Commission if their integration strategies were to be developed further.

However, the greater involvement of the Commission in the development of sectoral strategies means in some cases that they have become little more than reflections of on-going Commission priorities. This has been the case particularly in relation to the mid-term reviews of the CAP and CFP. In the case of fisheries, the Council has explicitly stated that an integration strategy must await the publication of the reform proposals.

There is therefore a need to bring the Council and the Commission closer together in the longer-term development of integration strategies.

One of the major weaknesses of the Cardiff process highlighted by IEEP’s two previous reports^{4 5} is that there has been ‘remarkably little cross-referencing between the documents’. For example, the Vienna European Council in 1999 called upon all Councils to address climate change in the development of their strategies. Global warming is quintessentially a cross-sectoral issue, but in the absence of mechanisms to co-ordinate the contributions to greenhouse gas reductions of different Councils, there has been little progress evident in the strategies in this respect.

An alternative approach to EU policy co-ordination in relation to climate change is the European Climate Change Programme (ECCP). This is a Commission-initiated programme which brought together relevant DGs, Member State representatives and stakeholders in the development of policy options. An evaluation of the ECCP is included as an annex to this report as an alternative case study.

More generally, Councils could gain from stronger and more systematic coordination. Thus the report of the Development Council neglected to make reference to the strategy of the General Affairs Council, even though trade and development issues featured significantly in the latter.

2.1.3 Content of the Cardiff strategies

Against this procedural background, it is not surprising that the content of most of the strategies does not fulfil the tasks of addressing all relevant environmental issues. The conclusions of IEEP's June 2001 Progress Review remain valid, and are reproduced as Annex I to this report. Particular attention should be drawn to the following points:

Integrating Environment or Sustainable Development?

The Cardiff and succeeding European Councils referred to the need to integrate both environmental and sustainable development considerations into the work of individual formations of the Council. As a result, it has never been clear whether the needs of the environment should always take precedence, or whether they should be traded off against economic or (more rarely) social considerations - in other words whether Cardiff is ‘about’ Article 6 or Article 2 of the Treaty. However, the Cardiff Conclusions state (¶32) that

‘A healthy environment is central to the quality of life. Our economies must combine prosperity with protection of the environment. That is why the Amsterdam Treaty emphasises the integration of environmental protection into Community policies, in order to achieve sustainable development’

This gives a clear reference to Article 6, and supports the argument that Cardiff is a tool for integrating environmental considerations with the aim of achieving sustainable development.

The consequence of this apparent ambiguity was made clear in recent conclusions of the Industry and Energy Council on Enterprise Policy and Sustainable Development (6 June 2002). The focus of these conclusions was on sustainable development rather than environment, and more specifically, how environment policies should be tailored to the needs of the economy. The Council placed particular emphasis on ensuring that environmental legislation should not hamper the competitiveness of European industry as it competes with third countries with lower environmental or social standards. In this regard, it emphasised that the forthcoming 6EAP Thematic Strategies on, respectively, the sustainable management and use of resources, and waste recycling should take fully into account 'industry-related concerns'.

Most Council strategies have in practice focused on environmental integration and given extra weight to environmental considerations within the sector, but the conceptual ambiguity has provided opportunities for some Councils to avoid the discussion of important issues, or to address them selectively.

Comprehensiveness of the strategies

In the absence of detailed guidance and steering, the coverage of the strategies has been extremely variable. For example, the report of the General Affairs Council fails to address its responsibility for horizontal and major budgetary issues, while the Ecofin report focuses mainly on the economic and fiscal policies of the Member States rather than those of the EU. To date, many of the reports contain only a rehearsal of the questions that would need to be addressed in a strategy, without supplying proposals or clear objectives. Full analysis of the problems posed for the environment by sectoral policies, and the range of options available for addressing them is also generally absent, although the transport strategy perhaps comes closest to providing these.

The question of the elements which would be needed in a ‘model’ strategy is returned to in Chapter 3.

Links to the 6EAP and the EU SDS

The Göteborg Summit called upon Councils to take account in their sector strategies of the commitments in the draft Sixth Environmental Action Programme and the EU Sustainable Development Strategy. This was important, since it was the first occasion that the European Council had given concrete guidance on the objectives that each strategy should reflect. However, the only Council to respond explicitly to this request has been the new Competitiveness Council. In a report adopted on 14 November 2002 and addressed to the GAERC, it accepts that there is a need to take account of the 6EAP, and the follow-up to the WSSD - particularly the call for the programmes on sustainable production and consumption. It therefore proposes to review the existing (Internal Market) strategy in conjunction with the Commission, under the forthcoming Greek and Italian Presidencies, and produce an updated strategy before the end of 2003.

Again, the possibilities of these various linkages are returned to in Chapter 3.

Box 1:
Ecofin Report to the Barcelona European Council 6 March 2002

2.2 Case study of the Transport Council’s integration strategy

2.2.1 Introduction

The Transport Council integration strategy, adopted in October 1999⁶, implicitly acknowledged the limited success of integration attempts to date, which had been largely confined to reducing polluting emissions from new vehicles, stating that the ‘indefinite continuation of current trends in the growth of private and commercial road transport and aviation is unsustainable in relation to environmental impacts’. Accordingly, it recognised the need for packages of policy measures to influence transport demand and travel behaviour. It was also unusual amongst the original strategies in that it gave a brief but fairly comprehensive indication of the various environmental problems caused by transport.

However, like other strategies it has been less active in proposing concrete action, although there is some progress on issues such as targets, and a recent conference addressed questions of best practice in strategic integration mechanisms in EU transport policy.

By contrast, the Commission continues to propose a range of transport-related measures. Some of these appear consistent with the Council’s priorities, and others less so. More generally there are signs of divergent approaches between Commission and Council in relation to transport integration, as described below.

2.2.2 The Transport White Paper

In 2001, in parallel to the development of the Cardiff strategy, the Commission developed a White Paper on the Common Transport Policy (CTP), as part of the regular updating cycle. However, drafts of the White Paper were criticised on the grounds that they paid insufficient attention to the full range of environmental considerations; that they did not address the ‘decoupling’ of transport demand from economic growth which was called for at the Göteborg Summit; and that they placed undue reliance on supply side policies to promote modal shift to rail and water transport. Perhaps because of this, in July a draft was ‘called in’ by Commission President Prodi, who wished to ensure that the policy would support the goals of the EU SDS. The result of this unusual procedure was the publication of a set of ‘policy guidelines’ which included a reinforced section on ‘the need for integration of transport in sustainable development’ with a stronger environmental dimension and a requirement to ‘consider the option’ of gradually decoupling transport from economic growth.

The White Paper was published in September, but still did not contain a clear statement of the problems to be addressed (including no significant reference to the TERM indicators); and it did not fully address decoupling of transport demand from economic growth, an issue which had been raised in Council Conclusions.

2.2.3 Recent Council Conclusions on the transport integration strategy

The Transport Council Resolution on the Cardiff strategy during the Swedish Presidency of 2001 stated that a further Cardiff review would be undertaken during the Danish Presidency. Accordingly a quite progressive and ambitious draft text was circulated by the Danish administration for comment during the summer of 2002. However, many of the elements calling for further progress were later deleted, reportedly on the advice of the Council’s legal services. It remains unclear why a non-binding text should have presented so many legal problems, particularly with apparently inoffensive and uncontroversial references to Articles 2 and 6 of the Treaty, for example.

A number of Member States were nonetheless keen to proceed and would have been unhappy to see a statement postponed or abandoned, as the Transport Council has thus far met all the main timelines imposed by itself or the Summits. However, a successful outcome appeared far from certain, as prolonged negotiations would have competed for the time available in the Transport Council Working Group with Denmark’s substantive legislative priorities.

In the event a new set of Conclusions was agreed at the Council meeting of 5-6 December, with a number of the more important elements of the early draft restored. In particular, the Göteborg Summit’s wording on a ‘significant decoupling’ of transport and GDP growth is restated, along with the environmental priorities (greenhouse gas emissions, particulates and unregulated pollutants, and noise) set out at that time. It includes a strong statement on the need for impact assessments of all major proposals, and follows precedent in referring positively to the latest TERM report, quoting its challenging conclusions that transport is becoming less sustainable rather than more, and that integration efforts need to be redoubled. At a late stage, an additional paragraph was added, welcoming the Commission’s ongoing work on a framework for fair and efficient pricing, environmental targets, modal shift and measures to safeguards the future of the TERM indicators – apparently reflecting concerns over progress, in that the first two of these items were expected during the Danish Presidency, but have been delayed.

Thus a positive result has been achieved. Reflecting on this experience, there is generally an expectation in reviewing progress on the transport strategy (as perhaps in any other policy development process) that policy will develop in a fairly linear way, with each stage building upon and elaborating upon what has previously been agreed. However, compared with the Commission, for example, the Council does not have a particularly strong or reliable ‘institutional memory’; and under the rotating Presidency system, this ‘memory’ is not necessarily very consistent, either. A further point is that the political composition of the Council also changes over time, and this will continue or even accelerate in the future. In an enlarged EU, there will on average be a general election every two to three months – ie probably more frequently than Environment Council meetings or Summits.

A distinctive element of the transport Strategy was its early adoption of a system of indicators under the framework of the TERM (Transport and Environment Reporting Mechanism) project. This was promoted by the European Environment Agency (EEA), working closely with the Commission, Eurostat and others. The first annual update of this was published in 2001⁷, and the second was published in December 2002⁸.

TERM benefited from the outset from a clear political mandate of support from the Council; and it has been at least mentioned in most or all of the relevant Council Resolutions or Conclusions since that time. Concerted attempts are also in hand to ensure that adequate resources and a sound institutional basis are established. A Working Group of the Joint Expert Group (JEG - see below) addressed this issue, although permanent links between the JEG and TERM have not been established (eg through EEA involvement in the JEG).

From the outset, the EEA consulted widely and sought to take a well-structured approach to identifying indicators in the framework of its DPSIR concept. Indicators were also grouped around a set of key ‘policy questions’ covering, for example, environmental performance, transport demand and supply. Within this, the development process also sought to begin by setting out the scope and criteria, then identifying an ideal set of indicators and establishing how or to what extent they might be developed. This is in contrast to the much less ambitious approach of beginning from the available statistics and seeking to turn these into an indicator set – as has been done in some other sectors.

There is a wide range of good and bad practice in the development of sectoral indicators, and TERM sets a good model, in terms of process as well as content. Even at this stage, the TERM model could usefully be applied in other sectors – and indeed in the sustainable development indicators discussed below.

However, neither the Council nor the Commission has sought to capitalise on TERM in developing structural indicators for the Commission's annual synthesis report to the Spring European Council. Indeed, in the course of the CTP White Paper, TERM receives only one passing mention in a footnote.

2.2.5 Distinctive elements: the Joint Expert Group on Transport

Work on the Transport strategy has been supported throughout by a Joint Expert Group (JEG) on Transport and Environment, consisting of one transport and one environment expert from each EU Member State and the other members of the European Economic Area. The existence of such a group itself marks transport out from other sectors in the integration process. In September 2000, the JEG produced a strategic review of transport and environment policy⁹ applying a systematic approach to operationalising the concept of ‘environmentally sustainable transport’, addressing the various policy measures available. Various other reports have been produced, including one on use of objectives and targets in the sector.

One area of particular interest is that it has already commissioned research on the transport integration aspects of EU Enlargement, and has established a Working Group to address this issue. Representatives of several candidate countries already participate in the Group, which is considering a broad range of issues surrounding Enlargement. In this the JEG appears to be very well advanced in comparison to many other EU committees and working groups, which have not yet taken the opportunity (or in many cases had the possibility) to integrate candidate countries to such an extent.

The Resolution of 2001 in particular included explicit recognition of the complementary role of the JEG in supporting the Commission. The group is chaired in rotation by DGs Tren and Environment. Its members are as far as possible selected on an ad hominem expert basis, and in principle attend as independent experts rather than proponents of their own government’s positions on given issues. As an informal group it does not have voting mechanisms, and its reports reflect a consensus, but not necessarily the unanimous view of its membership.

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