The Environmental Integration Clause in Article 6 of the EU Treaty: Prioritising Environmental Protection

Abstract

Traditionally, environmental protection legislation has taken the form of direct statutory intervention to protect certain habitats or require the reduction of pollution output. However, the only recently reworded ‘environmental integration clause’ in Article 6 of the EU Treaty has created a very different instrument to further the Treaty objective of environmental protection (stated in Article 2). It introduces the concept that environmental protection requirements must be taken into account whenever laws are passed and decisions are made. Rather than direct legislation on a specific field of environmental action, the environmental integration clause requires the indirect adaptation of all legal measures with environmental protection requirements. The author argues that this duty to ‘integrate’ environmental protection requirements has many practical implications and, above all, results in the priority of environmental protection when balanced against other Treaty objectives. The implications of such an interpretation are particularly striking in cases in which environmental protection clashes with well-established economic Treaty objectives, such as the free movement of goods.