Variation in EC environmental policy integration : agency push within complex institutional structures

Abstract

The principle of environmental policy integration (EPI) has been adopted by the European Community and gained priority status in its fifth Environmental Action Programme. This article investigates the reasons for considerable variation in applying this principle by comparing the experience of environmental policy integration in two 'most similar' although differently evolving cases: the European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund. I argue that in order to explain substantial environmental improvement in the former case and poor compliance with the EPI principle in the latter, it is necessary to place the complex actor constellations and networks in the Community in their (micro)institutional framework. The policy network framework helps to recognize the role of actor interdependencies and chains that allowed environmental NGOs to play an influential role in the context of the Regional Fund reforms. (Micro)institutional analysis, in turn, points to the constraints experienced by a similar NGO campaign in the case of the Cohesion Fund and the opportunities opened up by recent institutional changes.