摘要: Irish environmental policy has unquestionably been altered through its engagement with over three decades of EU environmental policy making. Whereas before entry into the then European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, Ireland had a somewhat minimalist and British-influenced corpus of environmental regulation, Ireland can now point to a much larger, more diverse and more Europeanized body of national environmental policy. On balance, Europeanization has certainly increased and modernized the content of Irish environmental policy. Yet the style and the structures of Irish environmental policy have been much less influenced by the EU. Ireland's enthusiasm for a more proactive type of relationship with EU environmental policy has not grown to the same levels seen in some of the'greener'small member states. It is significant that Irish pollution abatement expenditure is still very low in comparative terms, at about 0.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)(OECD 2000: 21). The EU, therefore, appears to have had a fairly limited impact when measured in terms of altering national cultural mindsets and attitudes towards environmental protection. Moreover, as Ireland has experienced record levels of economic growth in the last decade, the ability of the EU to encourage a shift towards sustainable development appears especially limited. Measures of Irish environmental decline continue to show worrying trends, and Ireland's implementation of EU environmental laws is still relatively poor. This is pushing Ireland into a growing number of legal conflicts with the European Commission and Irish environmentalists. It is also important to …