How effective is EU environmental legislation?
Tough new emission rules, which will bring together seven existing (and frankly, leaky) bits of disparate EU legislation, were agreed last week in Luxembourg. The agreement brings the EU a little closer to having some real laws, with bite, on curbing the effects of industrial pollution.
Word for word, here’s what Stavros Dimas, EU commissioner, had to say about it: “Industrial emissions in the EU are still very high. It is absolutely vital that these emissions be reduced, especially by those industrial plants that pollute the most. Today’s agreement brings us one step closer to substantial emission reductions from industrial plants, which will decrease the exposure of European citizens to harmful pollutants and significantly improve the health of the environment”.
Well that’s the spin; the reality is a little less clear.
For a start the new limits, which no-one has been notified of as yet, will not come into force until 2016. And then there is the small matter of the fact that individual nations will have the option to phase in the regulations over a period of time that can stretch to as far as 2020. The rules still have to go through a second reading of the European Parliament so there is every possibility that, with contentious clauses, politically inconvenient clauses and the like, the whole schedule may fall even further back; after all, none of the incumbents want unpopular legislation, however necessary it may be, to come into force during their tenure so, as always, delay will be the order of the day.
Is that cynical or are we just being realistic? To date, legislation has done little to lessen the irreparable damage that the commercial sector has done to the environment or lessen the terminal depletion of our limited energy-generating resources; in fact, the only winners appear to be those legal firms that have devoted financial resources into developing environmental specialism departments. All this despite the very obvious and very necessary need for businesses, in both the manufacturing as well as the services sectors, to act now to reduce the impact of our previous excesses.
Over the past 12-18 months, any legislation with an environmental bias has been produced only to deflect attention away from negative news regarding any incumbent government, not just that of the United Kingdom. One need only Google, for instance, Boris Johnson’s name to bring up lists of ‘green’ initiatives (the latest being to convert London’s waste into eco-fuel). This year alone the UK government has created numerous opportunities to raise its PR profile using the medium of environmental concern (for example, the G20 Summit and the 2009 Budget), the outcomes of which have been poor bordering on the non-existent. The Copenhagen Summit at the end of this year does not promise, therefore, to move things by any measurable degree.
So can we please stop relying on the legislators? The business of reducing our exposure to a future energy-poor economy is the domain of business people – people who know how to make a decision, act upon and see it through to measurable results. Let’s accept that and act accordingly.
