Environmental Monitoring and Enforcement in Europe: A Review of Empirical Research

Abstract

Environmental concerns have been moving up on the agendas of policy makers in industrialized states, mostly involving debates about the stringency of environmental regulation. There are, however, two sides to environmental regulation that deserve attention. On the one side, there are factors that affect the definition of environmental law. On the other side, laws cannot clean up the environment unless they are properly monitored and enforced by governments and their responsible agencies. Comparatively scant attention has been paid by political scientists to this latter aspect. This article addresses the issue of environmental monitoring and enforcement and reviews the empirical research on European states. While there is some promising research on individual states, cumulative knowledge is hampered by the limited number of comparative empirical assessments. The main reason for this deficit, however, can be seen in difficulties regarding measurement and data availability. Inspired by the reviewed literature, the article suggests a measurement that takes into account changes in the legal competences of the agencies responsible, which might be helpful in overcoming the impediment to comparative analysis. Yet improving our insights by means of comparison is only one of several points that constitute the research agenda with respect to the study of environmental monitoring and enforcement in Europe. Thus, another contribution of this article is the identification of promising avenues for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy

“…The second interpretation focuses on policy outcomes , impacts or effects, i.e. the question of whether a policy indeed resolved the problem it set out to solve (Barrett and Fudge, ; Mastop and Faludi, ; Vedung, ; Berke et al , ; Winter, : 159; Tosun, : 440).…”

Act‐based Versus Harm‐based Sanctions for Environmental Offenders

“…Such a lack of data is a widespread characteristic of empirical studies on environmental monitoring and enforcement (Rousseau, 2009a;Tosun, 2012). Such a lack of data is a widespread characteristic of empirical studies on environmental monitoring and enforcement (Rousseau, 2009a;Tosun, 2012).…”

“…This framework is based on an overview of theoretical and empirical studies (see Cohen, 1999;Rousseau, 2009a;Gray and Shimshack, 2011;Tosun, 2012, for relevant overviews of the literature). This framework is based on an overview of theoretical and empirical studies (see Cohen, 1999;Rousseau, 2009a;Gray and Shimshack, 2011;Tosun, 2012, for relevant overviews of the literature).…”

Mind the trend! Enforcement of EU law has been moving to ‘Brussels’

“…Enforcement, i.e., monitoring compliance, investigating an alleged violation and the sanctioning of a violation, can rectify non-compliance and promote the attainment of policy goals. (Multilevel implementation) research on the enforcement of EU law has been scarce and has focused largely on domestic compliance with EU law, mostly at the transposition stage (but see Thomann 2015), the enforcement of EU law by national authorities, especially in the field of environmental law (Faure 2004;Martens 2006;Tosun 2012;Treib 2014;Versluis 2003;Versluis and Tarr 2013;Vervaele 1999a;Wenneras 2007) and the area of financial fraud (Pujas 2003;Quirke 2010;Vervaele and Luchtman 2015;Vervaele 2013), and the traditional area of EU direct enforcement in competition law (Articles 101 and 102 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [TFEU]; Cseres 2016; Jones and Sufrin 2014;Monti 2007). The traditional division between regulatory and enforcement stages of the policy cycle belonging to the EU and national levels respectively can explain the existing focus.…”