Collier asserts ( 1997a, p. 1) that 'Environmental policy is con-
sidered to be one of the European Union's most successful policies',
but what does this success consist of? Admittedly, from a posi-
tion where there was no environmental policy at all, the EU has
developed an extensive policy which has a base in the treaties,
its own directorate-general and is embodied in several hundred
directives and regulations. The key questions are 'How well overall
is the environmental system of governance performing? In par-
ticular, how far is it producing high quality decisions that are
well adapted to the problems at which they are directed?' (Weale,
1996, p. 609). If decision-making is often suboptimal, as Weale
suggests, this reduces the chances of securing the desired out-
comes. It is to the question of how the institutions of the EU
take decisions about environmental policy that we turn to in
Chapter 1.

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