Environmental policy in Europe can be considered to exist in a neo-liberal context. Strategic Environmental Assessment may constitute a challenge to the prevailing neo-liberal ethos of the European Union and have implications for those states within it that are most enamoured of competitiveness, deregulation and a declining role for the State, notably Britain. The troubled gestation of Strategic Environmental Assessment poses fundamental questions about both transport and environmental policy in the EU and whether fundamental challenges to neo-liberalism might be needed to fully integrate environmental policy into other policy areas. (A)
Abstract