| Front page | | Contents | | Previous | | Next |

The Future of the Cardiff process

3 Defining the contents of integration strategies

3.1 Overview and structure of strategy content

The Cardiff European Council called for the inclusion of targets, timetables, indicators and regular monitoring and reporting procedures in sectoral integration strategies. These were to be defined by the Councils themselves, which were also given broad discretion to set their own integration objectives and options for achieving them. The Finnish Presidency in December 1999 took this list slightly further, by suggesting the following as a contents list for a strategy:

1. An analysis of the situation (state of the environment, problems and trends)
2. Objectives and targets (not necessarily quantitative)
3. Actions and measures (Community level – national level only as necessary)
4. Timetables for measures
5. Actors (as necessary, cf (3))
6. Indicators
7. Monitoring and review

More recently, a Danish Presidency discussion paper has also sought to give a clearer form to some elements of strategy content, such as a checklist of environmental impacts to be considered, and a requirement to consider whether the strategies taken together cover all relevant environmental objectives.

However, some of the tasks assigned by the Cardiff and subsequent summits to the Councils themselves would, with the benefit of hindsight, now be more appropriately undertaken by other institutions. For example, an analysis of the state of the environment and pressures upon it might usefully be supplied by the EEA, and could often be derived from its existing publications; yet all the strategies have thus far had little or no recourse to the EEA’s materials. Issues of coordination and framework-setting are discussed further in the next chapter, regarding procedural and institutional aspects of policymaking.

3.2 Approaches and competences

There is also a need for greater differentiation between the Councils as regards the scale of their contributions to environmental integration. Community competence differs significantly in degree between different policy areas, such that some strategies – particularly in relation to transport or health, for example – have to reflect very limited or scattered areas of Community competence, while in others – such as agriculture and fisheries – Community policies are far more wide-ranging and (potentially at least) coherent.

At the same time, in all areas there remain (and will remain) significant degrees of national discretion in relation to the mode of implementation, and sometimes as a result, the overall effectiveness of Community policies. There are inevitably interactions between policies and measures applied at all levels of government, and it must weaken the effectiveness of the Cardiff approach if these are ignored.

Clearly the focus of Cardiff should remain with Community policy, and hence the Finnish list above refers to measures at national level ‘only as necessary’. The key here, however, is to consider what national measures it is ‘necessary’ to include; as in many cases it seems clear that it will be necessary to address certain national measures as well as Community measures if seeking a path to genuine sustainability.

Having identified such measures, it would enhance the effectiveness of the Cardiff approach if Council formations could begin to develop guidance on some of the more important areas of national policy, at least insofar as these have a bearing on the effectiveness of Community policies. These in turn could be applied through a process of peer review, perhaps utilising some elements of the Open Method of Coordination.

3.3 Existing commitments

As regards the contents of Cardiff strategies, a minimum requirement should be to respond to relevant existing commitments in the 6EAP, the EU SDS and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and to set out options for achieving them. These commitments need to be brought together in an overarching EU environmental road-map.

Annex II sets out these commitments as they apply to each Council formation, and could form a basis for such a road-map. Putting agreed commitments into a formalised framework such as this would be an important step forward for the Cardiff strategies, as it would not only give them a broader relevance, but would also help to counter the problem of the limited ‘institutional memory’ of Councils, as discussed in Chapter 2.

The same approach could also be applied to the Council’s own self-commitments, either within the Cardiff strategies or elsewhere (eg in other Council Conclusions or Resolutions). It is noteworthy that the Joint Expert Group has already undertaken this process for the Transport Council, and has adopted the self-appointed task of monitoring progress towards Council self-commitments from the strategy.

3.4 Looking ahead

As well as systematising existing commitments, it would now be helpful for Council formations to take a more proactive approach to the upcoming Thematic Strategies under the 6EAP. Thematic Strategies represent a new approach to policy development in relation to a number of cross-sectoral themes. Ideally they bring together all relevant directorates-general and stakeholders, and consider a range of options and policy instruments for addressing them. As such, they represent a parallel approach to environmental integration to that represented by the Cardiff process, which has had a more sectoral orientation. In view of the future importance of Thematic Strategies, Annex III assesses the contribution of the European Climate Change Programme (ECCP) - not itself a Thematic Strategy, but a prototype on which the 6EAP strategies are likely to be modelled.

Councils need to acknowledge the importance of this new policy process, and begin to propose future actions, or at least areas of priority for action, that would contribute to their own objectives within the framework of the Strategies.

As a first step towards this approach, Table 3.1 below sets out an interpretation of the intersection between the areas of competence of the various Council formations, and the likely coverage of the various Strategies. This illustrates that there are some particularly strong areas of overlap for some Council formations, and this could therefore act as a first step to help indicate the most important priorities for the Council in its approach to the Thematic Strategies.Table 3.1 Potential input of Councils to 6EAP Thematic Strategies

Table 3.1:
Potential input of Councils to 6EAP Thematic Strategies

Look here!

3.5 Monitoring and reporting

As noted elsewhere in this report, different sectors have taken differing approaches to indicator development, with mixed results. Some have begun from a broad overview of what would ideally be required to illuminate the key policy questions for the sector, while others are rooted firmly in the currently available statistics. Some reflect indicator development and production processes which are already well established, either within the EU institutions or elsewhere, while others have a less strong institutional footing. And those Council formations that have not developed any integration indicators should be encouraged to do so.

However, given the prominence which the structural SD indicators have now taken on within the framework of the EU SDS and the Spring reviews, it can be argued that there is now a need for a more consistent and structured approach within the Council formations. Better coordination of integration indicators into an overall framework is needed in at least three distinct dimensions:

	Incorporation of policy integration indicators into overall environmental performance indicator sets;
	Linkages between environmental, social and economic indicators at Council/sectoral level to provide SD indicator sets;
	Linkages between Council/sectoral level indicator sets and the overall structural indicators, to form a coherent hierarchy of indicators to evaluate SD at both sectoral and strategic/cross-cutting levels.

With these requirements in mind, it seems clear that appropriate integration indicators should be determined with much more central input to the framework by the Commission, the European Environment Agency and/or the GAERC.

The monitoring of progress against these indicators is also a task that might better be allocated to the institutions listed above. As a basis for such an evaluation, each Council formation might be required to report annually to the GAERC on its contribution to environmental integration. The report should not only address changes in the indicators themselves, but could also be made more forward-looking by discussing all impact assessments undertaken by the Commission in policy areas falling within a Council formation’s responsibility; how relevant commitments in the 6EAP and other programmes have been taken into account; and what contribution the Council itself has made to assessing the various outcomes identified. In this context, it is noteworthy that the recent Transport Council Resolution contains strong wording on impact assessments, envisaging that major proposals will in future not be considered without a proportionate level of impact assessment except in very exceptional circumstances; and this may provide a model which other Council formations might follow.

3.6 Coordination of best practice

While it is important to maintain the benefits of ‘learning by doing’ in the various Council strategies, the changes in the policy and institutional context outlined below now mean that there is a need for greater central guidance and co-ordination in relation to the contents of individual Council strategies. Indeed, there is arguably now scope to bring together the collective learning from nine Council formations over a period of up to four years of Cardiff strategies. Based on existing analyses of the process, the GAERC (perhaps with the help of the Commission and the Environment Council) could now distil best practice from each Council formation, and propagate this more systematically across the Council as a whole, setting benchmarks and guidance for each of the main elements of the strategy content as set out above.

More generally, issues of coordination and institutional architecture are taken up in the chapters which follow.

| Front page | | Contents | | Previous | | Next | | Top |