Environmental agreements at European Community level—reflections based on member state experience

The experience from five national environmental agreement schemes, all about energy efficiency in manufacturing industries, is discussed in relation to the potential for similar action at the European Community level. Agreements at the Community level could have significant advantages. But success at the national level depends on parameters that would be difficult to reproduce or substitute at the Community level, e.g. extensive administrative capacity, substantial political threats, large economic benefits, and/or the capacity to grant tax relief. To overcome such problems, and gain some of the advantages of Community action, one option would be to focus Community action on the best bets, namely a few energy-intensive industries with good capacity for collective action. Another option would be the combination of Community action with national action.