Impact of EU Environmental Policy in Ireland

Jane O’Mahony, “Europeanisation as Implementation: The Impact of Environmental Policy-making in Ireland” Irish Political Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, 265-285, September 2007. Reviewed by Gemma Mc GivernJane O’Mahony is a lecturer in European Politics at the University of Kent. Previously, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin. In her research she focuses on EU policy making and on Ireland’s relationship with the EU. Since the publication of this article Jane O’Mahoney published a monograph on “Ireland and the European Union” together with Brigid Laffan.

Europeanisation as Implementation: The Impact of Environmental Policy-making in Ireland” portrays the change in environmental policies in Ireland since Ireland’s accession to The EEC in 1973. Joane O’Mahoney compiled an accessible, structured and well-written article which shows how the policies in Ireland have been shaped to reflect environmental policy practices at the EU level. The author focuses on the highly powerful farming lobby groups and the influence they have on the government in Ireland.

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This article presents a strong argument on how the EU sets the agenda and ensures policies they agree on are implemented and if countries don’t adopt their policies there are procedures in place to ensure such countries are punished. The article is divided into three sections and includes two interesting, familiar case studies- the Nitrates Directive and the Habitats Directive. The first section introduces the concept of Europenaisation and presents different interpretations. All interpretations do, however, agree that it is a process whereby EU politics and policies are incorporated at a national level across member states.

This is the concept on which the article is based. The authors view that the interests and preferences of key policy stakeholders are affected by the need to comply with EU legislation is introduced. An actor-based institutionalist framework then emerges as member states adapt to the EU. There is a natural flow to the article and the second section carries on from this view. The author views such actors as being rational stakeholders who are central to the negotiating and bargaining process among key veto players in order to produce compliant outcomes.

O’Mahoney throughout the article offers explanations and definitions to aid the readers connection and understanding of the topic, contributing to the overall accessibility of the article. The process of EU implementation is described as initially conering “the transposition into national law and later the application and enforcement at national level”. The procedures taken by the Commission to punish member states for non-compliance are discussed later in the case studies.

The main body of the article is discussed by the author in the third section of the article. This section discusses the impact of the EU on environmental policy making in Ireland. This section offers a break for the readers to interpret the illustrations, which come in the form of graphs and tables. Environmental law and policies in Ireland have been influenced by EU membership, most notably since the late 1980’s. This was the time when new environmental controls were introduced and Irish branches of international environmental groups were established.

Although Irleand were making progress (mainly as a consequence of the first Green Party was elected to the Dail in 1989 and subsequently the setting up of the Environmental Protection Agency) they were still far behind other EU member states (due to the slow reaction inbringing forth, implementing and enforcing EU environmental legislation). O’ Mahoney’s view is strengthened by the graph in Figure 2 which shows Ireland coming third in 2005 (out of 15 member states) regarding environmental infringement cases. This cases accounted for 25% of the total of all infringement cases, which covers nine different policy areas. European Commission Annual Implementation Report 1998-2006). These figures, it must be noted, cannot be viewed in isolation as they are discredited by the fact thst 30 open infringement proceedings against Ireland were deemed cases of bad application. O’Mahoney remains unbiased in presenting all the information to the reader. It would be more effective, however, if she had the same…. To allow comparison. Also in this section the author discusses the highly influential farming lobby groups, which I will discuss later. As referred to earlier the author includes two case studies in the article.

The first is the Nitrates Directive (1991). The aim of this was to prevent pollution of water from agricultural sources. It involves a limit on livestock numbers and the volume of organic nitrogen fertilizer that can be spread and also requires investment in storage facilities for animal manure. The author over three pages attempts to explain this complex directive and the difficulties and challenges that it presented in Ireland. The Commision and subsequently the ECJ were not satisfied with Ireland’s voluntary approach and three years later found against Ireland in Infringement proceedings.

Strong opposition from farmers resulted in the Commission allowing higher nitrates use for farmers in certain circumstances. The second case study in the article is the Habitats Directive (1992). The aim of this directive was to ensure the conservation of natural and semi-natural habitats and species of flora and fauna. The Irish government, similar to the nitrates directive, faced strong opposition form farmers and interest groups. Ireland, along with all other member states, didn’t meet the deadline in which to implement the directive. This resulted in Ireland being brought before the ECJ for failure in transmitting a useful list of sites.

Also, as with the Nitrates Directive O’Mahony attempts to explain the details of the directive in over three pages. It is quite disappointing that the author doesn’t provide her own views and analysis on the future and effectiveness of the directives. One main dimension of the Habitats Directive, which the author ignores, is the protection of certain bogs. A report (National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2008) on the status of EU protected habitats in Ireland found that active raised bogs had declined by 35% over the past decade and less than 1% of the original active raised bog area is remaining.

This a very worrying statistic and surely makes one wonder about the effectiveness of the Habitats Directive. The author discusses the powerful role of farmers in the implementation process. the Habitats Directive was requiring private landowners to protect habitats, which wasn’t greeted favourably by farmers. Also, the issues of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) resulted in great opposition from farmer groups. Farmers accused the Irish Government and the EU of taking their rights away regarding their land.

Farmers successfully secured a compensation package and set up an appeals board for objections to site designations and levels of restrictions. There was, however, continuing opposition from farmers regarding the application of the directive and mobilisation of environmental NGOs. It is clear from even the details of this directive that the powerful influence that the farmers had over the Irish Government resulted in the interests of farmers being taken into account when it came to implementing the directive. The two policies are proof enough that Europe has a strong hold over Ireland.

Negotiations between actors at a domestic level is essential in ensuring compliance, most notably agreement with farmers is critical. Heavy punishments from the ECJ means that Ireland can no longer not obey the directives set out by the Commission. O’Mahony leaves the reader wondering about the future of the importance of farmers in the decision making process, as agriculture is declining in the Irish economy. The two directives help the reader gain insight into the arguments that the author makes throughout the article. One argument clear throughout the article is the power that the EU has over domestic policies.

It is clear from the punishments that can be handed out by the ECJ that Ireland and other member states cannot ignore directives given from the Commission. Also the powerfuln influence that key stakeholders have in policy negotiations are great. In particular farmer interest groups have had great influence on the policies adopted by the Irish government. The author represents environmental policy making throughout the article. The authors view that the process of implementation as a multi-actor negotiation game across different levels of governance is presented to the reader very well through explanations of procedures.