EU Policy
The UK is required under European law to comply with a number of directives; many of which apply to the coastal and marine environment.
About Directives
Directives apply to all countries in the European Union and provide a common framework for stewardship of our environment and social considerations. In particular, the environmental directives aim to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment, protect human health, prudently and rationally utilise natural resources and promote measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems.
The European Court of Justice has held that European Community law has priority over national law. Directives are known as secondary law. They are binding as to the results to be achieved, but the means of implementation and transposition into national laws are a matter for each EU member state.
Directives come into play once the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers pass a law. The European Commission initiates the legislation by sending draft legislation or proposals to the European Parliament, with its elected MEPs, and the Council, which has one or more representatives from each EU country, using a decision-making process called co-decision procedure. In practice, this process can be quite drawn out and usually involves three readings followed by a conciliation.
Who makes EU policy?
The main actors in the EU policy process are the European Commission (the Commission), the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of the EU (the
Council). There are three main decision-making procedures: co-decision, consultation and assent. Co-decision is the core legislative procedure and creates the Directives that are then transposed into UK law. It is the most widely used decision-making process within the EU and applies to a range of policy areas such as education, health, environment, transport, and culture.
The co-decision procedure was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty on European Union in 1992. It was simplified and its field of application extended by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997. Essentially co-decision places the EP and the Council on an equal footing whereby the Council, representing the governments of the Member States, and the EP, directly elected and representing the peoples of the EU, adopt legislation jointly.
Transposition
Once a directive is passed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, each country usually has two years to transpose the directive into their country’s legal system. This stage is necessary to allow time to align the European directive with relevant laws within each member state. For example, in England the European Communities Act allows ministers to incorporate directives into English law by means of regulations.
The process of implementing European Directives is inevitably complex. Officials must turn the often broadly phrased objectives of a Directive into a workable system at national level. Yet that task often depends on coal-face knowledge they don't yet have. To do it well requires accurate crystal ball gazing about the effects of possible interventions. However, the crystal ball will yield different pictures as the process develops, knowledge is acquired and interests emerge. It requires the skills of policy officials, lawyers, and often economists and statisticians, each with different tasks to perform, at different times. Yet the work of one is frequently dependent on the work of others. The situation is further complicated as the power to implement Directives often lies not with central Government, but with the Scottish Executive, and the National Assembly for Wales.
Although the UK's record in implementing Directives is relatively good compared to other Member States, recent high profile cases have highlighted the fact that the process does go wrong, sometimes with serious consequences, not only practical but also political. It was these factors which led Defra's Environment Directorate General and Legal Services Directorate to explore whether project management techniques could provide a management model to cope with this complexity, and reduce the risks of late or poor implementation. This has been done with the help of a consultant.
Text taken from EUROPA, Oakleigh Consulting and Water UK Websites, March 2008.
