Most standard accounts of the European Union (EU) do not
consider it necessary to define what is meant by environmental
policy and equally most books on the subject launch into their
discussion without considering what it is that is being assessed.
In one sense, a definition may seem unnecessary: the environment
is that which surrounds us, the physical set of conditions in
which we and other sentient beings exist. One might go on to
argue that environmental policy is what the EU seeks to do to
protect the physical environment.

It is at least necessary to pause to consider what environmen-
tal policy consists of and what its boundaries are. Despite what
is in many ways its global character, the issues on the environ-
mental agenda differ from one part of the world to another. For
example, in the Pacific North West in 1999 the three main en-
vironmental issues on either side of the border between the United
States and Canada were: (i) salmon; (ii) whether native peoples
should be allowed to exercise their treaty rights to hunt whales;
and (iii) old growth forests. None of these issues has any particular
resonance in the EU.

The policy process is segmented into a number of vertical
compartments, but environmental policy is itself in turn highly
segmented. Although the EU's environmental action plans rep-
resent an attempt to define a set of priorities and policy for the
environment as a whole, in effect one has a set of distinct policies

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