European environmental policy

Despite its primarily economic origins and its belated concern for the environmental issues, the EU became, after 1972, one of the major international actors in the protection of the environment. Recognised in treaties from 1986 onwards, environmental policy was organised around the notion of sustainable development and gave rise to a strong legislative agenda and the establishment of structures of information, financing and control on a European level. In so doing, the EU found a new form of legitimation.