History
EU environmental policy started as a collection of disparate laws which had no specific Treaty basis. There was no department dedicated to environmental issues for the first 15 years of the European Commission’s existence. It was only in 1973 that an environmental unit was created within DG Industry; a fully-fledged Environment Directorate-General (DG) was then set up in 1981. However, it remained a relatively weak DG in the Commissioner for several years due to its lack of institutional experience and human resources; Having started with 5 officials in 1973, there were still only about 60 officials in the 1980s.
In its early years, DG Environment hired specialists with technical knowledge who had a different culture to the other Commission’s officials. This ‘gave a reputation for being dominated by “ecological freaks”'. However, overtime DG environment matured and settled into the Commission’s ways of working. In particular this meant taking politics more into consideration when formulating legislation so that it could be adopted and better implemented.
The Fifth Environmental Action Programme which came into force on 1 January 1993 marked a sea-change in DG environment’s approach to policy-making. It attempted to present the DG and its policies in a more contemporary and constructive light. The programme demonstrated that legislation was no longer to be made solely behind closed doors, but together with all social and economic partners.
Read more about this topic: Directorate-General For The Environment (European Commission)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)