Abstract
Two policy frameworks of the EU play an important role in enhancing the ecological sustainability of agriculture: environmental policy and the common agricultural policy (CAP). The latter includes some positive incentives for environmental contributions (‘the provider gets’). A central principle of environmental policy is that the producer should bear the costs of meeting certain minimum standards to control pollution (the ‘polluter pays’ principle). Starting in the early 1970s with the first Environmental Action Programme, the EU is now executing the seventh such programme. Progress has been made in developing water and air policy but less in the case of soil protection. Many environmental indicators show positive past trends, but meeting environmental targets remains a challenge.
This chapter is a revision of Floor Brouwer and Huib Silvis, Chapter 20. Rural areas and the environment. In: Arie Oskam, Gerrit Meester and Huib Silvis (Eds) (2011), EU policy for Agriculture, Food and Rural Areas, Wageningen Academic Publishers.
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Notes
- 1.
The ‘polluter pays’ principle is set out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [3] and Directive 2004/35/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental damage is based on this principle. The directive entered into force on 30 April 2004; member states were allowed three years to transpose the directive into their domestic law, and by July 2010 all member states had completed this.
- 2.
Such type of payments come close to the lump sum payments, which according to standard economic theory can be used to support Pareto efficient equilibria. Within the context of agricultural policy, decoupled direct payments with environmental conditionalities associated to these (e.g. cross-compliance) are an operational example of such a payment. The EU’s cross-compliance regime is a special case, as the compliance regards adherence to existing, whereas cross-compliance in the classical sense refers to voluntary action done in addition to the normal practice (Cardwell 2017). As argued by Perman et al. (2011), even a (decoupled) lump sum payment may affect the industry’s profitability, which indirectly contributes to an expansion of the industry in the long run.
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- 4.
The original renewable energy directive (2009/28/EC) establishes an overall policy for the production and promotion of energy from renewable sources in the EU. It requires the EU to fulfil at least 20% of its total energy needs with renewables by 2020. In December 2018, the revised renewable energy directive 2018/2001/EU entered into force, as part of the clean energy for all Europeans package, helping the EU to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement. The new directive establishes a new binding renewable energy target for the EU for 2030 of at least 32%, with a clause for a possible upwards revision by 2023 (see Chap. 14 of Volume I).
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Silvis, H., Jongeneel, R., Linderhof, V. (2019). Environment and Agriculture. In: Dries, L., Heijman, W., Jongeneel, R., Purnhagen, K., Wesseler, J. (eds) EU Bioeconomy Economics and Policies: Volume I. Palgrave Advances in Bioeconomy: Economics and Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28634-7_13
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