The Development And Enlightenment Of Environmental Policy In The European Union

The European Union is the most politically and economically integrated regional organization in the world. She has developed relatively well-established environmental policy, played a very important role in the international environment affairs and had great relevance for environmental issues in China. Most of the past studies have adopted the approach of political or legal perspective. This dissertation attempts a study on the evolution of the European Union environment policy and its enlightenment of China. This paper emphasizes the process of the European Union environment policy development and analyzes the essence of the environmental problem.In accordance with the major characteristics of the European Union environment ideals or consciousness, the paper discusses four stages of the evolution of the European Union environment policy. The first stage lasts from 1958 to 1972 in Stockholm. In this stage, the industrial pollution was the main concern in the Western Europe, a problem endangering human health. There was no official environment policy, except some regulations to protect health and control pollution. The second stage is at the beginning of the European Union environment, from 1972 to 1987. European Union and other advanced countries were certain that it was man who was polluting in the process of building market-oriented economy. Based on the knowledge, the European Union made official laws and policy to protect environment and adopted the environmental management measures. The third stage is the development of the European Union environment policy, from 1987 to 1992. During this stage, the European Union developed more than one hundred environmental legislatives. The fourth stage starts from 1992 when the environmental problem develops into comprehensive global ecological crisis to nowadays. After the UNCED, the European Union launched the Fifth Environmental Action Program as a strategic approach of implementation of Agenda 21, which started the period of sustainable development.After thirty years development, the EU policy accomplished undeniable achievements, especially in the control of some specific environmental problems. Learning from the EU can give our country a lot of enlightenment. It will help our country to get along with other countries. The advanced experience of the EU will push the environmental protection of China.