CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Duprey, Brendan Kenneth |
|---|---|
| Title | Natura 2000: Bulgaria's Paper Park |
| Summary | Natura 2000 derives from the Birds and Habitats Directives and is the centerpiece of the European Union’s (EU) nature and biodiversity conservation policy. It creates a network of protected areas throughout the EU. Many Member States, however, have faced an inability to ‘comply’ or behave in a way that is consistent with the legislative objectives set forth in the two Directives. Unfortunately, there has been little academic research conducted on this final stage of the implementation, which is theorizing on why targets of EU policy do or do not behave in a way that is consistent with the objectives of the policy. This thesis sought to provide insight into this question through an in-depth case study analysis of Bulgaria and the deviant “Case of Wind Turbines in Coastal Dobruzha”. It was conducted through semi-structured open-ended interviews with the key informants of this controversial case, which is currently under trial in the European Court of Justice, and the analysis of primary and secondary source materials. From the analysis, two sets of conclusions were drawn. The first set of conclusions highlighted the relationship between the state and the EU. The legal transposition of the two Directives in Bulgaria was largely due to the desire for European membership. During the pre-accession phase of EU integration, insufficient resources were allocated by the EU for the policy to be implemented effectively after membership. As a result, once the relationship between the EU and the state changed from one of conditionality to regulatory cooperation, ‘massive resistance’ on a domestic level ensued due to the high domestic costs of compliance. Administrative officials in charge of implementing Natura 2000, as well as Bulgarian society as a whole, were relatively inexperienced with biodiversity conservation. At the same time, they were undergoing the ‘wild east of legislative changes’ causing enormous constraints on administrative officials and high adaptation costs. One persistent failure on a European level is the assumption that they have a ‘coalition of willing partners’ in Member States with regard to policy implementation. Therefore, preventative measures are not set up to subvert non-compliance, thus there is little the EU can do to try and obtain compliance after violations occur other than infringement proceedings. This research found that these proceedings could be largely ineffective in altering the behavior of the state. This is largely due to the length or infringement proceedings and the probability of detecting non-compliance by the Member States. Counter to contemporary political theory, the research uncovered that over time the relationship between the EU and the state can develop into a ‘de-cons tructivist 19; learning process. Rather than learning new ideas and norms through European policy implementation, states can identify mechanisms to avoid costly policy mandates or illustrate policy implementation through ‘pseudo compliance’. This means that states can externally display compliance to minimize or delay the costs of detection by the European Commission while not intending to fully comply with legislative objectives. In addition, the multitude of EU Directives sets up a market place of European objectives that states can choose to accept or reject based on whether they align with domestic priorities. In Bulgaria, the renewable energy targets of the EU aligned with domestic priorities, and ‘mal-adaptation’ pursued as the state successfully achieved EU renewable energy targets at the expense of biodiversity conservation. European companies played a key role in capitalizing on, and exploiting, a weak state in transition to seek financial gain. This was only further exacerbated by the contradictory role European institutions played in seeking to achieve their inter-institutional priorities at the expense of the objectives of the Birds and Habitats Directive. The thesis also found that in Bulgaria administrative officials are strongly dependent on the political parties in power. Therefore, national, regional, and local administrative bodies oftentimes do not take procedurally neutral administrative decisions, but use their authority to implement decisions consistent with centralized political objectives. Therefore, the tools used for policy implementation are only as good as the intention of those that wield them. The second set of conclusions relates to the impact of Europeanization on internal domestic politics. NGOs can become empowered by European Directives that align with their policy preferences and push the state to insert these objectives into their national agenda. The state authorities, however, can resist this agenda and develop sophisticated methods for law avoidance. In order to circumvent the state, NGOs can appeal to the European Commission by filing citizens’ complaints, thus empowering the NGOs in this new political sphere of influence. Member States control financial, authoritative, organizational, and nodal tools, which can be deployed to carry out retaliatory measures against these NGOs in order to undermine their ability to effectively conduct their work. The thesis concludes that Bulgaria, like all other Member States, has unique geographic, cultural, political, and economic circumstances that became dramatically transformed through the EU approximation process. The EU must develop a holistic approach to policy-making that will not only achieve concrete goals, but also change the policy environment to one that is more favorable to new policies. Only when this is achieved can we begin to see a European system where Member States work together with European institutions to overcome domestic barriers they face in order to meet strategic objectives of European importance. |
| Supervisor | Antypas, Alexios; Pinter, Laszlo; Zankina, Emilia |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/duprey_brendan.pdf |
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