EU environmental legislation : legal perspectives on regulatory strategies

This thought-provoking book offers a cross-cutting debate on EU environmental legislation from a legal perspective focussing on key themes such as regulatory instrument choice, the coherency of law, and enforceable commitments. Based on thorough investigations of several environmental domains - particularly water law, air quality law, industrial emissions law and climate and energy law - it presents the current state of EU environmental regulatory approaches and suggests potential ways for improvement. It pays close attention to the consequences of EU legislative choices for Member States and balances the need for clear environmental legislation providing enforceable substantive rights to citizens against the wish to leave discretion to Member States. This timely book provides a critical review of the complexity and inherent flexibility of EU environmental law. It will have great appeal to environmental law scholars, political scientists, environmental policy and law consultants and to Governmental officers both in the EU and Member States.