Modern environmental policy of the European Union: the struggle for resources and conflict of interests in various market segments

            In the modern world, the environmental agenda is becoming increasingly relevant. The development of the world economy, the increase in energy consumption, and the development of international trade are gradually worsening the environmental situation in various countries of the world.

            The environmental agenda has become particularly relevant during the Covid-19 pandemic. A sharp decrease in the intensity of international trade, the suspension of the activities of some large enterprises in various regions of the world, a decrease in the number of tourists and, as a result, a reduction in flights – all this had a completely unpredictable impact on the environmental situation. "Gradually, there is a return of species to their habitats, such as the return of dolphins to the canals of Venice as a result of the purification of adjacent waters" ^[1]. Reducing emissions contributed to the loss of smog in Beijing ^[2]. The decline in demand for some types of wood has caused a reduction in deforestation in the Amazon jungle.

            With the recovery of the world economy, all these processes will be reversed to one degree or another, but the pandemic has demonstrated to humanity an extremely important pattern – the consequences of human activity are reversible and the ecosystem is able to recover.

            In fact, the present trend is not a scientific discovery, since this theory needed only a practical demonstration. In this regard, we should expect in the very near future to restore the needs of the population of the countries of the Global North in the development of environmental initiatives and projects.

            Among the States of the Global North, the countries of the European Union have the most developed environmental legislation, as well as the most stringent environmental standards.

            Without a doubt, the topic of ecology is extremely important in the modern world: the global problem of environmental pollution can be solved only through the joint efforts of the absolute majority of countries in the world. In this case, the European Union is a model of a coordinated policy of bringing production and consumption to the required standards, in an attempt to achieve a reduction in emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels in the framework of the "European Green Deal" ^[3].

The purpose of this study is to trace the relationship and mutual influence of the environmental policy of the European Union with the current trend of the struggle for resources in the context of the ongoing conflict of interests on this issue in various market segments. Also in this article, the authors tried to trace the dependencies of the mechanism of implementation of the environmental policy of the European Union, establishing what impact it has on the society of European countries and their economies, and what reverse impact these areas have on environmental policy.

The objectives of this study are as follows:

1. Consider the relevance of the issue of environmental policy for the European Union;

2. Give the concept of environmental policy and its features;

3.                  To identify the degree of responsibility of EU countries for causing environmental damage;

4.                  Define the criteria for the formation of the EU environmental policy;

5.                  To analyze the principles of implementation of the pan-European legislation on environmental policy;

6. Evaluate the "European Green Course".

In accordance with this research direction, the authors selected and applied the following methodological approaches: systemic and institutional: when considering the relationships of actors both at the global and regional levels. Within the framework of a systematic approach, the interaction of the European Union countries within the framework of a new environmental policy is considered, affecting internal changes in the political, economic and social spheres on the example of individual participating countries. Thanks to the institutional approach, the analysis of the regulatory framework of the documents and programs necessary for the study was carried out. The authors also used the following research methods when writing the article: thanks to the historical method, we established cause-and-effect relationships between various processes and events; the regulatory and institutional method was used by us for a comprehensive analysis of the legislative framework of the European Union countries, as well as the programs of political parties of major European countries.

XXI century - the century of the environmental agenda

The widespread industrial development of the late XIX century and the entire XX century led to an increase in the consumption of energy resources and raw materials, the extraction of which is also associated with the consumption of energy resources. As Karl Marx correctly noted: consumption is also an act of production ^[4]. The level of consumption of industrial products in the last few decades of relative political stability and the flourishing economies of the countries of the Global North has increased significantly ^[5], which, in turn, has affected the pace and volume of industrial production. The culture of consumption, in this case, played a significant role in increasing emissions into the atmosphere and hydrosphere.

            Humanity is only now taking the first steps towards truly "green technologies" that can largely reduce the rate of environmental pollution or even reverse the process.

            The establishment of trends in the influence of the environmental policy of the European Union on various spheres of citizens' lives requires an emphasis on the terminology used in this study:

            The main term of this study is the concept of "environmental policy". Environmental policy is a very broad term in its internal content, and we can interpret it as a specific area of political action of state and non-state actors involved in ensuring environmental safety by strengthening means and mechanisms for the preservation and protection of the environment ^[6].

By "environmental policy" we mean the whole set of measures used to ensure long-term environmental safety, taking into account the economic opportunities and social needs of society. Currently, environmental policy acts as a significant, independent, structurally structured direction of state activity, closely related to socio-economic and political processes at the international level and within the state itself.

The modern environmental policy of the state is aimed not only at preventing environmental pollution, but also at creating conditions for its restoration and preservation. The environmental policy of the EU countries is no exception. It should be noted that a feature of the functioning of the European Union in the field of the implementation of a coherent environmental policy is the creation of directives and framework programs, specific measures for the implementation of which remain within the responsibility of the member states. The member states independently develop measures and set restrictions, while the programs developed at the supranational level can be adjusted by the EU member states towards over-fulfillment.

The environmental policy of the European Union, in this regard, has one feature: it is one and different at the same time. The norms and rules of each specific country differ in their strength and target areas, when as a result of the application of these norms, the targets remain equal for all countries of the Union.

In this regard, the authors will further consider the impact of EU policy in the field of ecology within the framework of pan-European trends that are valid for most of the member states of the Union.

Responsibility of EU countries for environmental damage

Industrial development in Europe is uneven. Despite the fact that the union invests in the development of Eastern European countries in its composition, industrial production is mainly located in the countries of central and western Europe.

Among the industrial locomotives of the EU, Germany and France can be distinguished, large production facilities are located in the BENELUX countries, Italy and Spain. The concentration of industrial production in these countries does not mean their and only their direct responsibility for environmental pollution in European countries.

The principles of implementation of pan-European legislation presuppose equality of members before directives and at the same time equal conditions and targets for each member of the Eurozone.

In this regard, the thesis that high levels of production activity are directly proportional to the increase in environmental risks is more interesting ^[6]. Their management requires not only a developed national legislative framework capable of restricting private industry's access to mechanisms and technologies that increase risks, but also the unification of rules in this area with the nearest neighbors.

The compactness factor of the European Union plays a significant role in shaping the principles of implementing and building a coherent environmental policy: any environmental incident has consequences for almost all EU member states, geographically the countries are located compactly, and the current relationship between the industrial concerns of the EU countries is extremely sensitive to supply chain disruptions.

The formation of the EU environmental policy in this regard has several key features:

1) Environmental initiative of large countries – industrialized regions are responsible for emerging environmental risks on their territory. The development of local and national legislation is carried out taking into account the prediction of new probable risks and their prevention. The absence of such measures is fraught with claims of the affected neighbors for damages, which can cost the government, the guilty concern and, ultimately, the taxpayer dearly.

2) The unification of norms and rules is the key to preventing environmental risks – the norms and rules of individual EU member states are not infrequently borrowed and adapted by their neighbors, and in some cases are accepted as a standard at the level of the entire union. Also, within the EU, there are effective methods of preventing environmental threats and improving the quality of enterprises' activities within the framework of the requirement to increase energy efficiency. The unification of the rules has another important positive result – the reduction of internal trade barriers and the consistency of actions in the implementation of targets. The use of the same and/or similar solutions to eliminate environmental problems significantly simplifies the activities of cross-border enterprises and indirectly contributes to the free movement of labor. The employees of the enterprises are already aware of the requirements of environmental safety and the opening of new production facilities in other member states takes much less time.

3) Industry is exceeding the norms – the priority direction of the environmental policy of the EU countries is the fight against environmental changes in the long term. In this connection, the participating countries are introducing various incentive measures for enterprises that are aimed at switching to more environmentally friendly production technologies, reducing emissions and taking care of the life of the product after its decommissioning. Along with prohibitive measures for enterprises of the "old" type that are unable to ensure compliance with basic environmental standards, incentive measures are being introduced for those who exceed the plan, such as tax incentives, loans to ensure the transition to "green technologies", the introduction of preferential loans for environmentally friendly enterprises. The experience of European countries is reflected in the practical guide on the "greening" of industry for the Eastern Partnership countries ^[7]. At the same time, there is an explicit prohibition for states in implementing the policy of subsidizing enterprises to comply with environmental standards.

4) Trans-European nature of environmental policy The application of European environmental policy measures often crosses the borders of the EU and directly affects the exporting countries of resources and semi-finished products to the Union market, as well as the EU's neighboring countries. United Europe, within the framework of the application of its environmental standards and norms, obliges through complex import and export control mechanisms to adhere to similar rules of its trading partners. Goods and products grown or produced in violation of EU standards thousands of kilometers from the union will not have the right to be freely sold on the shelves of stores of the participating countries. At the same time, the union allocates financing in the form of concessional lending to individual states within the framework of the implementation of EU environmental standards, and also allows European banks to invest and concessional lending to exporting enterprises outside the union in order to convert them to environmentally cleaner production that complies with the rules of the Eurozone ^[7]. Among the non-monetary methods of influencing exporting countries and their enterprises, it is possible to distinguish: the introduction of an import ban, assistance in the development of roadmaps for the transition of states to more environmentally friendly energy resources and technologies, assistance in the development of cost-effective production management systems and simplification of the certification procedure for products of such industries.

5) Private companies are the main executors of the EU "greening" program – as strange as it may seem, the implementation of EU environmental norms and standards falls mainly on private companies. They are responsible, within the framework of the national legislation of the countries in which they are registered and carry out their activities, whether it is the production, construction or operation of various types of power plants, for making the transition to environmentally friendly energy sources, reducing emissions, and, ultimately, achieving carbon neutrality. In reality, the EU countries, within the framework of the stipulated budgets, provide assistance to enterprises in the form of grants and tax benefits to stimulate the transition to "green" activities. However, the cross-border nature of production, different levels of grant funding in different EU countries often force companies to invest their own funds in the implementation of a new environmental policy. Not all "green" technologies lead to lower operating costs in the long term, so the tightening of environmental standards directly affects the final consumer of the product or service.

6) Environmental reforms are paid for by the European taxpayer – the policy of "greening" states involves significant costs for the introduction of green technologies, the construction of environmentally friendly energy sources and the modernization of production facilities. Despite the fact that the European Union, as a supranational organization, seeks to eliminate the backlog of Eastern European countries by subsidizing some projects, the EU is taking these measures for a reason. As in any other organization consisting of nation–states, the distribution of economic potential is uneven. Through subsidies, the Government of the European Union levels differences in living standards and social security standards, however, from the point of view of implementing environmental policy, the issue remains not entirely transparent. The presence of large industrial production in the countries of Western and Northern Europe from the point of view of simple logic implies that the implementation of the program of transition to a green economy should fall on the shoulders of these states. The authors of this article in this case consider the situation in which large industrial private companies, such as Volkswagen AG, BMW AG, Airbus, etc. have their registration and main production facilities in one industrially developed country, such as France, Germany, BENELUX countries. However, the components of their final product are manufactured in several EU countries, such as Slovakia, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. Grants and assistance in the modernization of production facilities are allocated mainly by national States and are subject to use within the territorial limits of this state, when the obligation to comply with environmental standards is maintained at the same level for all enterprises of a private company, regardless of their geographical location within the union. In this regard, the EU, as a supranational institution, allocates grants to less developed countries to solve environmental problems on their territory. In fact, taxpayers of developed European countries, where the main production forces are concentrated, pay for the environmental modernization of enterprises in less developed EU countries.

"European Green Course"

There is substantial evidence that ecology has a great influence on the political sphere of the European Union. In this regard, it is important to mention the elections in Germany in 2021 ^[4]. According to the results of these elections, the Green Party took third place. It was her best result in many years. At the moment, the German government consists of three parties, not two as before: the Free Democratic Party of Germany, the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party ^[8]. At the last federal elections in 2017, the Green Party did not meet expectations, gaining 8.9% of the vote and winning 67 seats in parliament. In the 2017 elections, the Greens were still the smallest faction in the Bundestag. However, over the past four years, the party has shown good results in elections in several states and in elections to the European Parliament. This gives the Greens a very good chance to play a key role in the formation of a new German government after the elections.

In addition, the Green movement was outside the executive power until 2019 in some industrialized EU countries, such as France and Spain, where environmental ideas were popular. The heyday of the ecological party came during the crisis of European social democracy. The main reason for the crisis was the outdated view of the leadership on the modern realities in which European society has already begun to live, and this was also largely due to the migration crisis in Europe.

I would like to note that the popularity of environmental parties in European countries is not uniform. In the South of the region, environmental parties are not particularly popular, even in Sweden, where environmental issues are taken very seriously, the party scored a little more than 4% in the elections in 2018 ^[9], which proves to us the heterogeneity of European countries in the environmental issue even at the political level.

Environmental parties in Germany, France, and the BENELUX countries are in great demand among the population. This is what the results of the elections in these countries at the regional and federal levels tell us. Parties of this kind are now in the ruling coalitions of these countries, which once again proves the great interest of citizens of European countries in the topic of ecology, its development and improvement.

I would like, however, to note one important detail. Correlation, as is known, does not make it possible to clarify the primacy and correct sequence in interdependence. In our opinion, there is no objectivity in answering the question of what is primary and what is secondary: is ecology a popular topic that requires early resolution and that is why green parties are so popular in many developed European countries, or are the "green parties", thanks to their social and political proposals in election programs or their individual members are so popular in society that environmental issues are brought to the fore by this society.

Considering the political situation at the supranational level, we can try to answer this question.

At the supranational level, the authors identify two key factors proving the importance of the environmental agenda in the EU development system in the coming decades. The goal of the green course established in the documents ^[3] as the main factor in the transition of the Union's economy to an ultra-modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy. 

The second proof of the EU's need for broad environmental changes at the supranational level is the unprecedented amount of funding coupled with the method of its implementation: One third of the 1.8 trillion euros of investments under the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan ^[10] and the seven-year EU budget will go to finance the European Green Agreement. The main intermediate mechanism in the implementation of the modern environmental policy of the Union is to follow the plan of the European Commission, which aims to ensure that the climate, energy, transport and tax policies of the EU correspond to the reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. All these measures will contribute not only to improving the state of the environment in Europe, but also to improving the lives of the population and creating new jobs.

The document sets out the following six priorities based on the objectives of the European Green Course:

1. Achieving the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050;

2. Increasing adaptive capacity, resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change;

3. Approaching the model of sustainable growth, eliminating the link between economic growth, resource use and environmental degradation, accelerating the transition to a closed-loop economy;

4. Striving for zero pollution, including with regard to the state of air, water and soil, as well as protecting the health and well-being of the European population;

5. Protection, conservation and restoration of biodiversity and enhancement of natural capital (especially air, water, soil and forest, freshwater, swamp and marine ecosystems);

6. Reducing the environmental and climatic burden associated with production and consumption (especially in the field of energy, industrial development, construction of buildings and infrastructure, mobility and the food system).

Observing the general transition to a green policy, all countries should be on equal terms, which seems almost impossible, knowing the economic inequality of European countries. In this case, an amount of 65 to 75 billion euros will be required to achieve the goals of green policy in the period from 2021 to 2027.

The European Commission has foreseen possible economic risks in the transition to clean renewable energy sources and invested 1 trillion euros, one half of which will come from the budget of the European Union, and the other from Invest EU ^[11].

The adoption of a program for reforming European legislation, bringing production, transport and construction to targets throughout Europe with the provision of covering some costs, as well as the historically compressed deadlines for the implementation of the program of transition to a "green economy" indicate a special need of European citizens, expressed through MEPs, in implementing environmental transformations.

An unprecedented amount of funding and a plan developed by EU institutions to compensate for the risks associated with green transit, the financing of which is also included in the budget. Like any other supranational organization that exists on contributions from member States, the EU does not have the right to finance such projects without the active consent of the member States. The allocation of significant funds once again proves the desire and active desire of European states to implement a sustainable course to improve the environmental friendliness of their economies, being aware that unforeseen risks will largely exceed the possible amounts of compensation from the supranational budget.

Conclusions

Taking into account the above circumstances, it can be concluded that the European environmental policy is focused not only on the prevention of environmental risks, but also on preventive measures that in the long term are able to achieve the neutrality of production and consumption in relation to the environment. At the same time, new environmental standards are paid for at the expense of taxpayers of relatively more developed European countries and lead to an increase in the cost of the final product of EU countries for consumers around the world. The rise in the cost of imported and own raw materials due to the application of environmental standards in cross-border trade also leads to an increase in the cost of production.

The following thesis follows from this: the increase in the cost of European goods and the decrease in the possibility of importing raw materials are directly dependent on the tightening of European environmental standards.

Thus, the following should be stated:

1. The authors note the dual nature of modern European environmental policy, which contributes to the achievement of a range of goals.

2. The EU's environmental policy places a heavy burden on the European taxpayer, which leads to a proportional increase in its costs.

3. EU environmental policy measures can be used to create conditions for protectionism in the EU internal market, both in the form of preferential trade for goods of its own production and in the tendency to restrict imports, which is a mechanism for circumventing European agreements on the free movement of goods and services.

4. EU standards are cross-border in nature and have an impact on companies and industries far beyond the European Union, which is sometimes an example of indirect protectionism in foreign policy.

5. The authors of the article note the complex socio-political nature of the formation of environmental policy in the countries of the Union, correlations do not allow to fully and objectively assess the level of necessity of existing measures and their perception by society.

6. Ecology in the European Union has long ceased to be a necessary criterion for existence and is used as a tool to increase the ratings of European parties. The environmental agenda is a tool in the struggle for mandates.

7. Assessing the effectiveness of the proposals and the possibility of implementing the program in a timely manner, the authors of this scientific work note its elaboration and balance. At the same time, the completion of the program's activities by 2030 seems unlikely. Taking into account the events after February 24, 2022, related to the escalation of the conflict on the border of Russia and Ukraine, the EU will focus on filling the energy pit, which will require additional financing and the use of "dirty" energy, such as the production of electricity and heat from oil and coal products.