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

The Future of the Cardiff process

4 Steps towards a stronger cardiff process

4.1 Introduction

There are strong arguments in favour of strengthening the Cardiff process as an initiative specifically directed at the Council, with a clear focus on environmental policy integration as required by Article 6 of the Treaty. Indeed, the Göteborg European Council in June 2001 called upon the different formations of the Council to ‘finalise and further develop’ their sectoral strategies. The discussion in Chapter 2 of this report indicates that there is some way to go before this process is completed, and evidence from the 'first wave' Councils indicates that there would be considerable benefits in allowing sufficient time for the process to mature in respect of those Councils which have become involved at a later stage.

Moreover, the Conclusions of the Environment Council of 17 October 2002 call for the reinforcement of the Cardiff process, and invite those formations of the Council so far left out (covering education, health, consumer affairs, tourism, research, employment and social policies) to produce their own strategies. Each Council formation is asked to give an account of its integration achievements to the Spring European Council every two years – ie a separate cycle from the annual review of the EU SDS.

However, it is clear that a number of steps need to be taken to make the Cardiff process more effective. These include

The more systematic involvement of the Commission in the development, monitoring and review of environmental integration strategies;

Better guidance and co-ordination to individual Councils through the development of an overarching environmental 'road-map' reflecting existing EU and international commitments that should be reflected in Council strategies; and a stronger co-ordinating role for the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC);

A stronger environmental input into the development and review of the EU SDS;

Improved co-ordination between, on the one hand, the Cardiff process and the EU SDS, and, on the other, the wider strategic planning and programming cycles within the Commission and the Council.

These steps, which are discussed below and in chapters 5-7, are not mutually exclusive. Rather they form a set of building blocks that together would produce a more integrated architecture for policy development within the EU that would fully reflect the needs of environmental integration.

It is difficult to see how the development of environmental integration strategies can remain the responsibility of the Council alone, when the Commission is itself engaged in major mid-term strategic reviews of key sectoral policies with major environmental implications, such as the common agricultural policy, the common fisheries policy and the Structural Funds. Moreover, the Commission is the only EU institution with the resources and established procedures for the consultation of stakeholders to undertake proper strategy development. The Commission is also increasingly concerned about its right of initiative.

An important initial contribution from the Commission might be to compile an overarching EU environmental road-map to provide a framework within which individual Council strategies could be developed. This would be based on agreed EU and international environmental programmes, and is discussed further in section 5.2 below.

The absence of an effective mechanism for steering, co-ordinating and standardising the integration strategies of individual Councils has been one of the major weaknesses of the Cardiff process to date. However, the reforms to the Council agreed in June 2002 at the Seville European Council now provide an opportunity to address this (see Ch.6). Potentially, this could provide a powerful instrument for ensuring that environmental considerations are addressed regularly and systematically by all Council formations.

When the Cardiff process was launched, the EU had no sustainable development strategy. However, there is now an established mechanism for the annual steering and review of SD-related policies at the highest level, by the Spring European Council. As the Commission has noted: ‘The Spring European Council is a defining moment in the annual policy co-ordination cycle¹⁰. The legitimacy and importance of the EU SDS has been boosted by the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), and its associated Plan of Implementation.

Following the reforms to the European Council agreed at the Seville summit in June 2002 – particularly the streamlining of its agendas –it seems unrealistic to expect EU Heads of Government to devote regular attention to the details of individual sectoral environmental integration strategies, at the same time as they review progress in relation to the EU SDS. It is important, therefore, that priorities for environmental integration are reflected in the development and review of the EU SDS as one tool to implement environmental commitments.

However, the EU SDS is a relatively new mechanism and exhibits a number of institutional weaknesses. Managing policies to advance sustainable development poses real problems for any system of government. This is because SD is par excellence a cross-cutting issue which involves the integration and co-ordination of economic, environmental, and social policies, and at different levels of government. It also cuts across both domestic and external affairs. In the EU, there is no Treaty guidance on how to handle the development of a sustainable development strategy. There is therefore a lack of clarity concerning the respective roles of the Commission and Council in relation to the EU SDS, the role of the European Parliament; and which Council formation (particularly post-Seville) and which Commission directorate-general should have primary responsibility for steering the EU SDS.

More specifically, there are major conceptual difficulties with the mechanism chosen to develop the EU’s SDS – that is, the extension of the existing Lisbon process for the development and co-ordination of economic and employment-related policies respectively. These difficulties arise because the Lisbon process is based upon the ‘Open Method of Co-ordination’ (OMC) – a Treaty-based mechanism for the co-ordination of the policies of Member States in policy areas where Community competence is rather limited. Box 2 sets out the essential features of OMC:

Box 2:
Features of the Open Method of co-ordination

co-ordination of multiple levels of government; recognition of the need for diversity between Member States; benchmarking, and the sharing of information and good practice; structured - but generally unsanctioned - policy guidance from the Commission and Council; development of National Action Plans by Member States; regular reporting from Member States to the Commission; and from the Council and the Commission to EU summits; a high level of political authority derived from supervision by the European Council.

By contrast, the EU’s competence over environment policy is extensive - albeit shared with Member States – and the environmental acquis is well developed. Accordingly, there is no Treaty provision for OMC to operate with respect to environment policy, and therefore no regular cycle for policy reporting and co-ordination.

The consequence of this is that there is an inherent danger in seeking to extend the Lisbon Process that the Commission’s policy recommendations to the Spring European Council (expressed in the annual synthesis report) will focus principally on economic, employment and social priorities, to the neglect of the environment. This was a feature of the synthesis report for the Barcelona summit in March 2002. Moreover, the recent Communication from the Commission on streamlining the annual economic and employment policy co-ordination cycles¹¹ fails to refer to environmental policy at all. Therefore, the environmental dimension of the EU SDS needs to be strengthened through the introduction of reporting and guidance mechanisms parallel to those which already apply to economic and employment policies. A crucial difference, however, is that the principal focus in this case should be the activities of individual Councils rather than the policies of the Member States (see Ch 5).

Strengthening the environmental element of the EU SDS on its own would not be sufficient to advance environmental policy integration within the EU. A new reporting and co-ordination cycle for environment policy within the framework of the EU SDS would focus principally on EU policies – specifically those of sectoral Councils and the activities of their associated Commission directorates-general - rather than the policies of the Member States (as is the case with economic and employment policies). Thus, there is a need to ensure that future environmental priorities identified in the framework of the EU SDS are at the same time taken fully into account in the parallel cycles for strategic planning and programming, within both the Commission and the Council. How this might be done is discussed further in Chapters 6 and 7.

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