AUTHORS: Andrew Farmer-Patrick ten Brink-Marianne Kettunen-David Wilkinson

Member States have considerable flexibility in transposing EU environmental policy which often leaves choices to them over the level of ambition, the measures they take to reach their targets and other factors that affect the costs and benefits of environmental policy in Europe. This flexibility will only pay off if Member States carry out systematic policy assessment that help them see where and how they can use it to implement EU environmental policy more cost efficiently.

In November 2005 IEEP organised a workshop in Brussels for national policy makers to identify good practice in Member State analysis, consider how best to share good practice and understand the barriers that need to be addressed and how they could be overcome. In order to inform the debate, IEEP (with its partners) produced a background report to examine the issues.