PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

192
The acknowledgement that “harmony between environment, society and
economy” is not easily ascertained “in the context of a global industrial and information
society” is noteworthy, as is the parallel dismissal of a sectoralized approach to
sustainability.
5.2.9 Summary Remarks and Prospects for Enlargement
Overall, it should be noted that within different EU documents, one can discern a
non-incidental, recurring distinction between the terms “sustainable growth” as it appears
in the Maastricht Treaty and also frequently in DG Transport and Energy documents, and
“sustainable development”, which is the more inclusive term, typically used in all DG
Environment documents, and more recently in the SDS. Interestingly, the Amsterdam
Treaty speaks of both “sustainable development of economic activities” and of
“sustainable growth” (also see Collier 1999:85).
Of course, despite being a relatively successful area of EU policy-making at least
in terms of the amount of legislation passed, environmental policy has often been
overshadowed by discussions on other all-encompassing topics such as competitiveness,
enlargement, subsidiarity and governance and democracy. Jordan (1998) identifies two
significant shortcomings of EU environmental policy. On one hand, there is an
implementation gap, which calls attention to the fact that especially in the early days,
much EU legislation was not appropriately enforced in the member states. On the other
hand, there is an integration gap, meaning that environmental considerations have not
been successfully integrated into all other areas of EU policy-making. An obvious
example is the EU agricultural policy, which has stimulated overproduction of unneeded