PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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foods and subsidized intensive farming methods whose fertilizers have been harmful to
natural soils and polluted groundwater reserves. We will see that EU transport policy has
been equally unsuccessful in consistently protecting the environment. Nevertheless, the
need for the integration and mainstreaming of environmental aspects is being repeated
almost like a mantra in all recent environmental and transport policy documents.
Eastern enlargement will most certainly be the biggest challenge to EU
environmental policy in the coming decades, and transport is a major aspect of that
challenge. Although an impressive amount of the CEEC legislation has already been
brought into compliance with EU laws and standards, this compliance presently largely
exists on paper. A frequent excuse is cost. Pollution prevention is to a large extent seen
as a matter of being able to invest in newer and cleaner infrastructures and technologies,
especially in areas such as waste water treatment or energy production. Nevertheless,
deficiencies in environmental protection, in the CEE states as well as in many of the EU’s
current member states, have more to do with non-enforcement, political unwillingness to
promote unpopular measures (such as restrictions on motor vehicle use) and a general
lack of awareness on ecological matters. The SDS includes a specific section on
enlargement, which includes the interesting observation that the future Member States
have much richer biodiversity that current ones. The strategy further calls for an active
integration of the Candidate countries in the implementation of the strategy (see p.9).
Note that the EU Commission is currently preparing its Sixth Environmental
Action Program (EAP, also see Chapter 4) and a new Green Paper on Urban Transport.
Overall, the new EAP proposal contained little innovative language, and most of the
concrete actions proposed are in the realm of more studies, reports, or best practice