EU Environmental Law, Governance and Decision-Making

Book excerpt: A vast and diverse body of EU law addresses an enormous range of environmental matters. This book examines a number of areas of substantive EU environmental law, focusing on the striking preoccupation of EU environmental law with the structure of decision-making. It highlights the observation that environmental protection and environmental decision-making depend intimately on both detailed, specialised information about the physical state of the world, and on political judgments about values and priorities. It also explores the elaborate mechanisms that attempt to bring these distinctive decision-making resources into EU environmental law in areas including industrial pollution, chemicals regulation, environmental assessment and climate change.