Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations: Capacity Building 3030685853, 9783030685850

Citation preview

Arpad Todor Florenţa Elena Helepciuc  Editors

Europeanisation of Environmental Policies and the Limitations Capacity Building

Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations

Arpad Todor • Florenţa Elena Helepciuc Editors

Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations Capacity Building

Editors Arpad Todor Faculty of Political Science National University of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest, Romania

Florenţa Elena Helepciuc Institute of Biology Bucharest, Romanian Academy Bucharest, Romania

ISBN 978-3-030-68585-0    ISBN 978-3-030-68586-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness��������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Arpad Todor and Florența-Elena Helepciuc 2 Municipal Waste Management ��������������������������������������������������������������   15 Arpad Todor 3 Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related EU Policies, and Their Domestic Implementation������   29 Ines Gavrilut, Lukas Feiler, and Metodi Sotirov 4 Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania: Where We Stand, What the Data Reveals, What Should Be Done in the Future? ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Gabriela Iorga 5 Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental Fund���������������������������������������������������������   75 Arpad Todor, Oana Hroștea, Maria Băran, and Robert Udrea 6 The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax ��������������������������������������   89 Oana Hroștea and Arpad Todor 7 Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More Harm than Good ����������������������������������������������������  101 Alina Bilan 8 Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania��������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 Arpad Todor and Florența-Elena Helepciuc 9 Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy������������������������������������������������������������������������������  133 Oana-Andreea Ion and Cătălin-Gabriel Done

v

vi

Contents

10 Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151 Natalia Cugleșan 11 Formal and Output Europeanization����������������������������������������������������  165 Arpad Todor

Abbreviations

ABC AC ACF AQ CAMS CBD CCs CEE CIRCABC CJEU CoC CVM DD EC ECJ EMEP ENGO EO EPIA EPR ESPP EU EUTR FLEGT FMP FSC GHG GD GPP IDAs IPM

Augmentative Biological Control Advocacy Coalition Advocacy Coalition Framework Air Quality Atmospheric Monitoring Service Convention on Biological Diversity County Councils Central and Eastern European Limited Lifetime Derogations Court of Justice of the European Union Chain of Custody Co-operation and Verification Mechanism Due Diligence European Commission European Court of Justice European Monitoring Programme Environmental Nongovernmental Organization Emergency Ordinances Environmental Policy Implementation Assessment Extended Producer Responsibility Electronic System for Public Procurement European Union EU Timber Regulation EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Forest Management Plan Forest Stewardship Council Greenhouse Gas Government Decisions Green Public Procurement Intercommunity Development Associations Integrated Pest Management vii

viii

IWMS LULUCF MBCAs MEAT MMAP NAP N.APP NFA NFI NGO NIS NMVOCs NSDS PEFC PRGDs REBECA RNSDS SACs SFM SNGD SPAs TFEU UNEP UNFCCC UNFF WWF

Abbreviations

Integrated Waste Management System Land use, Land-use Change, and Forestry Microbiological Control Agents Most Economically Advantageous Tender Ministry of Environment, Water, and Forests National Action Plan for Public Procurement National Agency for Public Procurement National Forest Administration National Forest Inventory Nongovernmental Organization Romanian National Institute of Statistics Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds National Sustainable Development Strategies Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes Regional Waste Management Plans Regulation of Biological Control Agents in Europe Romania’s National Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 Special Areas of Conservation Sustainable Forest Management National Waste Management Strategy Special Protection Areas Treaty of Functioning of the European Union United Nations Environment Programme United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Forum on Forests World Wildlife Fund

Chapter 1

The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness Arpad Todor and Florența-Elena Helepciuc

Abstract  This chapter presents the structure of the edited volume and reviews the most important theoretical tools useful for studying the degree of success in the Europeanization of environmental public policies in one of the newest EU member state, Romania. We approach this problem as an outlier cross-sectoral case study by reviewing the evolutions of several environmental public policies. This edited volume reunites a series of environmental public policy case studies aiming to answer how countries with inadequate environmental protection track records upgrade their policy capacity when they join a higher-standard environmental regulatory regime. We present the analytic structure followed by all chapters, how each policy field’s success is defined, and the most important issues specific to each environmental public policy. Subsequently, we briefly review the most important Europeanization theories with a specific focus on environmental public policies.

1.1  Introduction What happens when countries with inadequate track records in environmental protection and low administrative capacity join one of the most ambitious environmental regulatory regimes with some of the highest environmental protection standards in the world? To address this question, in this volume, we take Romania as a representative example of a country with historically low capacity and interest to design and implement environmental policies and analyze its evolution across a wide range of environmental policies after it joined the European Union. The sectoral analyses A. Todor (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] F.-E. Helepciuc Institute of Biology Bucharest, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_1

1

2

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

brought together within this volume ask the following overarching question: to what extent has the European Union (EU) integration led to a significant success in the Europeanization of Romania’s environmental policies? Europeanization is understood as a mix of norms, formal regulations transfer, and administrative capacity building that would result in sensible improvements in countries’ implementation of the environmental policies and policy outcomes, resulting directly or indirectly from EU membership. In other words, each chapter and the volume evaluate the mechanisms through which the EU membership upgrades a country’s administrative capacity, policy orientation, and capacity to achieve its environmental policy successfully. We propose a cross-sectoral comparative analysis of the trends exhibited across various environmental policies to provide a tentative. The European Union is a world leader in many policies designed to improve environmental protection and mitigate climate change and in recent decades has become an environmental policy regulatory powerhouse. The European Green Deal should further advance the European Union’s leadership in the global efforts to tackle climate change. Since 1999, with the opening of accession negotiations for the postcommunist countries, the EU has also developed some of the most complex and comprehensive national-level integration processes by employing a mix of conditionality and financial and administrative capacity-building assistance programs. During the accession process, each future EU member had to negotiate a dedicated chapter on the environment, defining the timing by which all the EU acquis dealing with environmental matters had to be fully implemented and specific targets would be met. Despite their poor historical track record on environmental protection, all ten of the postcommunist countries starting accession negotiations in 2000 should have achieved the capacity to fully implement EU’s environmental acquis by 2018 at the latest while simultaneously implementing the policies adopted after their EU accession. For Romania, Environmental Chapter 22 represented one of the most challenging negotiation chapters during the EU accession process. Consequently, Romania negotiated the highest number of transitional arrangements (Cugleșan 2019) derogation from the EU acquis when signing the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the European Union is founded (Accession Treaty) (European Union 2005). Having up to 11 years to reach the EU’s standards and significant financial support from EU funds, Romania signed on an ambitious environmental policy effort agenda. So, what came out of this project of integration? Recent evaluations raise serious question marks on the success of this effort. In July 2019, the European Commission started a new infringement procedure against Romania for failing to monitor air quality and pollution, permitting industrial installations to operate without appropriate permits, and failing to complete the Natura 2000 network for nature protected areas (European Commission 2019a). In October 2020, the European Commission announced a new series of infringement procedures in waste disposal, air pollution, water pollution, and nature protection (European Commission 2020). These are not the only issues Romania faces. A 2007 assessment stressed that legislation implementation is generally problematic, given the lack of planning, poor

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

3

coordination, and competent institutions’ underfunding (Bertelsmann 2017). With the expiry of the period of grace laid down in the Accession Treaty, Romania demonstrates low compliance with the EU water and urban waste legislation. It needs to improve coordination and strengthen the administrative capacity of authorities and agencies involved in implementing EU legislation, particularly on water and waste management and the protection and management of Natura 2000 sites. The 2019 EU Environmental Implementation Review (European Commission 2019b) revealed the limited progress made by Romania since its accession in 2007 in such areas as the circular economy (1.5% in 2015 and decreasing, compared with an 11.7% EU average). As such, it has the lowest “resource productivity” in the EU, only limited support measures to increase resource efficiency and stagnating rates of recycling since 2013 (European Commission 2019b, p. 4). No surprise, given its poor compliance record, the environmental policy has been the most critical source of infringement cases in the first decade after accession (Cugleșan 2019, p. 1). This trend has continued up until 2020. Given that the environmental public policy is a shared competency of the EU, Europeanization occurs along several dimensions and not only those regulated by the acquis. We evaluate Europeanization in the broadest sense as the sectoral analyses go from areas with strict targets set in the Accession Treaty, policy fields regulated by the acquis, to policies where the acquis is minimal or nonexistent, or other international norms regulate the domain. As we compare evolutions in very different environmental field policies, each chapter’s structure is relatively similar to achieve cross-sectoral comparability. In the introduction, the authors describe the general context and whether the regulations for that area stem from the international, EU, or national level. Then, success in implementation for each specific environmental policy is defined. In some areas, success is achieved by meeting the Accession Treaty targets or those set in subsequent directives. In others, it is sufficient to transpose in the national legislation the acquis to avoid triggering an infringement procedure in other policy areas. Some environmental policy areas do not have a specific acquis but are regulated by the acquis in other policy areas. If no supranational level goals are set, success is defined as achieving the aims of relevant national strategies or legislation. After determining the dependent variable and discussing its operationalization, the authors analyze the combination of political, institutional, and environmental factors that have led to the observed evolutions. In the next section of each chapter, the reader is introduced to the prominent historical landmarks of that policy development at the international and European levels. Subsequently, each chapter presents Romania’s main conditionality in that policy area at the moment of EU accession. Then, they show the relevant data to assess the evolutions between 2007 and today, the public policies adopted before and after EU accession to alleviate the identified problems. Chapters continue with a theoretically informed analysis of the observed evolutions, underlining different explanatory factors’ weight. In the Conclusions, each chapter highlights the main lessons from the study and possible avenues for improving the policy area’s situation.

4

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

This Introduction presents the underlying logic of the volume, the focus of each chapter, and provides a literature review relevant to this edited volume’s core interest. We locate the contributions of the volume within the broader scholarly debate on Europeanization with a particular focus on the evolution of EU environmental policy elaboration, transposition, implementation, monitoring and institution-­ building, and Europeanization through normative transfer. Chapter 2 analyzes the structural causes that have led to Romania’s constant failure to fulfill its obligations laid down in the Accession Treaty and Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste (Cugleșan 2019). The authors show how the policy solution chosen to create a new municipal waste management system almost from scratch leads to a structural misalignment of local, country, and national actors’ incentives. This misalignment prevented faster progress in implementing the county-level systems and stalled progress in achieving the targets in closing noncompliant land fields, limiting landfilling and recycling. Chapter 3 evaluates forest management development and the causes that generated widespread discontent over the destruction of some of Europe’s last virgin forests. Despite progress, changes in the property structure, incoherent policies, and limited enforcement caused by administrative inefficiency limit progress in protecting the forests. Chapter 4 focuses on some of the core reasons Romania has performed poorly in the area of air quality. It reviews Romania’s implementation of EU acquis and how this is reflected in emissions and measured atmospheric major pollutants’ levels, analyzes Romania’s capacity to monitor air pollutants, looks at EC’s infringement procedures against Romania, and discusses possible factors that led to Romania’s failure to fulfill its obligations under Directive 2008/50/EC as a result of a review of environmental policy literature. In Chap. 5, we analyze the evolution of the most crucial source of funding for environmental protection projects, the Environmental Fund, and the factors that explain its failure to contribute substantially to the improvement of Romania’s environmental performance. Chapter 6 analyzes the evolution of one of the essential programs funded through the Environmental Fund – the first matriculation and the scrappage programs. Given that the initial policy choice and the subsequent modifications were not compliant with the EU acquis, the continuous legislative changes, and finally, the drop of the tax prevented a significant positive effect as an environmental policy. Chapter 7 examines the slow progress in adopting the green public procurement legislation and implementation and explores some of the avenues for future accelerated progress in this area. Given that The GPP Law rather deters than encourages the use of GPP, the author identifies the unclear legislation and limited administrative incapacity as the core explanation for this policy failure, affecting the uptake of GPP in Romania due to several factors. Chapter 8 focuses on Romania’s implementation of the 2009 “pesticide package” and the country-level efforts to develop environmentally sustainable agriculture by fostering the usage of low-risk MBCA, implementing IPM, and promoting

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

5

organic farming. The authors show that while Romania undertook all the proper steps to meet the “pesticide package” requirement, more efforts are needed to meet some of the aims that have not been quantified. Chapter 9 discusses Romania’s capacity to affect a sustainable development plan. It analyzes the degree to which the aims set out in its Sustainable Development Strategy 2013–2020–2030 have been achieved so far and the degree to which the new strategy has incorporated the lessons learned from its first strategy’s failures. Chapter 10 will discuss the most critical factors that affected the evolution of compliance with EU environmental law in Romania. The author shows Romania achieving a general compliant behavior regarding environmental policies, despite significant deficiencies caused by the governance architecture and limited enforcement capacities. Finally, Chap. 11 will analyze the common patterns identified from the policy chapters’ synthesis and discuss the main implications of the analysis on the core question in the literature and understand the main factors that explain Romania’s deficiencies in policy implementation. We systematically address the commonalities identified at the level of all policies that have been analyzed. We explore some concrete steps that could be taken to improve the future design and implementation of environmental public policies.

1.2  Literature Review This volume contributes to the literature that explains the evolution of the EU’s environmental policy elaboration, adoption, implementation, monitoring and institution-­building, and Europeanization through normative transfer. The relevant literature can be split into two branches. The first branch focuses on the variation in the ambition, characteristics, and adoption of the EU’s environmental policy in various historical periods. Another branch aims to explain the success in implementing EU’s environmental procedures, focusing either on the EU’s capacities or variations at the EU member state level. Within the first category, Haigh (2015) analyzes the transformation of EU environmental policy from peripheral to central policy and the factors that affected the successful implementation of EU acquis relating to the environment. While the EU’s environmental policy has become one of its central policy areas, an evaluation of the post-2007 economic crisis shows that the environmental policy outputs adopted by the EU indicate a substantial decrease in ambition. The temporary decline is caused by the economic downturn, the EU’s enlargement, and a loss of appetite for stringent goals among the previous leader countries (Burns et al. 2019). A recent volume, Europeanization of Environmental Policy in the New Europe: Beyond Conditionality (Braun 2016), evaluates the degree to which the effects of the 2004 and 2007 wave of postcommunist countries’ accession would thwart the progress of the EU’s environmental policy. The volume focuses on how the accession of Central and Eastern European countries affected the EU’s environmental

6

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

policy. In the decade before the enlargement, the EU had become a world leader in environmental policy. Within the second branch, the literature of compliance with EU regulations is part of the broader literature of compliance with international institutions, grouped by Sedelmeier (2016) into three main types of argument: states’ cost-benefit calculations for enforcement, the perceived legitimacy of the global institution, and domestic constraints on compliance (see also Börzel et  al. 2010). Instead, the Europeanization of compliance literature focuses on two core explanations (Sedelmeier 2016, p. 11). First, the administrative capacity building through pre-­ accession conditionality focuses on the EU’s efforts before the accession to generate the coordination capacities and organizational structures at the national level. Second, the literature focusing on socialization stresses the importance of continuous participation in the policy process. Braun (2014) shows that EU climate norms diffused in the new member states through civil servants’ participation in the EU institutions and domestic norm entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the author finds scant evidence that this socialization influenced different countries’ environmental policy approaches. As an alternative, Börzel et al. (2010) organize the main explanatory approaches to compliance into three main groups: enforcement, management, and legitimacy. The edited volume reviews evolutions in several environmental policy areas and identifies the persistence in inefficient and rigid governance command-and-control modes as a core explanatory variable. For example, Buzogány (2009), focusing on Romania, identifies the following variables as explanatory for the limited success of environmental policy (both in opening negotiations and implementing policies): the little importance of the Ministry of Environment, ceremonial law, limited enforcement capacity, lack of coordination among various levels of administration and agencies, command-and-control approaches to transposition, an understaffed Ministry of Environment and agencies, low salaries, and absence of the necessary expertise. Focusing on the EU’s adaptive response, a 2000 edited volume by Knill et al. (2000) has analyzed, for the first time, according to the editors, the factors determining the successful implementation of the EU’s policy instruments. The volume focuses on the instruments themselves and not on specific policy areas. Knill and Lenschow (2000) explain how, after the 1987 expansion of the European Community’s environmental policy-making with the Single European Act, starting with the 1993 fifth EU Environmental Action Programme, the focus went on the implementation and monitoring of EU environmental policies. Renewed attention was given to the standardization of national institutions responsible for managing and monitoring EU acquis implementation. Beyond the increase in environmental policy’s importance, the most significant factor contributing to this change was the significant deficiencies in country-level implementation and reporting. In an article that aimed to evaluate the entire field of compliance, Angelova et al. (2012, pp. 1274–1278) group the literature according to the following causal explanations: EU-level approaches (monitoring and complexity of directives), national-­ level approaches focusing on preferences and capacities (“goodness-of-fit,” veto

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

7

players’ institutional decision-making constraints, actors’ policy preferences, interministerial coordination, administrative efficiency), and constructivist approaches (learning effects and culture). In recent years, a series of articles have analyzed the effects of the EU’s conditionality and environmental policy monitoring in terms of governance. Based on the analysis of directives in air quality, flooding, and water quality, Neewig and Koontz argue that EU effort in environmental policy has produced a policy innovation that combines participatory and multilevel governance for policy implementation. The authors coin this innovation as the “mandated participatory planning” approach. The approach means drafting EU general policy goals while leaving the planning and implementation at the member state level (Newig and Koontz 2014). Another recent volume edited by Börzel (2009) investigates the role of nonhierarchical new modes of governance involving nonstate actors adopted in accessing countries (from the Southern and Eastern enlargements) to improve the adoption and implementation of EU’s environmental acquis. Despite the limited staffing and expertise to apply and enforce the acquis, given the lack of “state and nonstate actors with sufficient resources to engage in nonhierarchical coordination,” the public administration has not involved nonstate actors and maintained the traditional command-­ and-­control modes of governance (Börzel 2009, p.  4). The Romania chapter by Buzogány (2009) analyzed water management evolutions, industrial air pollution, and nature protection, showing that accession had reinforced the command-and-­ control approach to regulation, despite its suboptimal results. Bondarouk and Mastenbroek (2018) identified the desire to learn, the quest for increased accountability, and the efforts to manipulate political opportunity structures as the factors that have led to the EU’s improved capacity for environmental policy evaluation 1990s. The process accelerated after 2007 when 140 full-time posts were created. Increased evaluation capacity led to many ex-post evaluations that generated essential policy-relevant knowledge (Schoenefeld and Jordan 2019). After analyzing 18 directives, Bondarouk and Mastenbroek propose conceptualizing the EU’s environmental policies’ compliant implementation along three dimensions of policy outputs: substance, scope, and effort. Using an analytical grid, the authors found knowledge deficits regarding the scope and effort of implementation and disproportionate attention on specific directives (water) and areas (North and West Europe). Within the same analytic focus, but concentrating on the largest EU enlargement in history, Carmin and VanDeveer (2005) analyzed the institutional and policy changes experienced by the postcommunist countries from the start of their accession negotiations and the reform of environmental governance. They described several case studies in Hungary (waste policies) and the Czech Republic (its sustainable rural development). Schreurs (2005) explains how, despite the integration of countries with very different environmental policy traditions, the overall EU approach has become more comprehensive and stringent. The EU has demonstrated considerable environmental policy-building capacity across all member states. Thus, EU accessions have not become a drag on the EU’s environmental programs. Success is attributed to the EU’s capacity to force states with lower environmental standards to

8

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

upgrade, but also the continuous democratization of decisional processes, employing new environmental policy instruments, and appealing to the European Court of Justice, extending the EU’s environmental expertise. Furthermore, Börzel and Sedelmeier (2017) and Börzel and Buzogány (2019) show that despite new members’ accession with a poor track record on environmental protection, the EU’s environmental policy has expanded. The implementation gap has narrowed, as the European Commission has opted for less burdensome regulations, incremental amendments, and the development of new instruments to strengthen member states’ implementation capacity. Most importantly, the Commission’s power to employ pre-accession conditionality and assistance and the negotiations of some lengthy transition periods are essential explanatory factors (Börzel and Buzogány 2019, p. 232). Focusing on compliance in general, Sedelmeier (2016, p. 24) identified two different causal paths: “weak states with governments supportive of European integration, in combination with either an efficient mechanism to coordinate EU affairs or a lack of domestic veto players.” Converging on the same question and comparing Romania and Bulgaria’s evolutions in the field of waste management, Cugleșan (2019, p. 1) argues “pre-accession conditionality and post-accession sanctioning mechanisms coupled with social learning through the internalization of norms explain the moderate success of both countries.” While most of the literature sees the usage of conditionality during pre-accession as the first step of the Europeanization of environmental policies, a series of articles critique this approach. Falkner and Treib (2008) argue that the new EU member states fall into a different approach to compliance than the old ones, called the “world of dead letters.” Also, Orru and Rothstein (2015) found evidence that their “blind-eye” Europeanization style might explain new EU member states’ good record on compliance. They focus on those rules that can be monitored by the EU while ignoring structural problems, an approach inherited from the Communist regimes. Approaches based on the EU-level complexity of directives evaluate whether various characteristics of the acquis, such as length, latitude, and timing of adoption (Ion 2016), affect the outcomes. Instead, monitoring arguments focus on the capacity and intensity of the Commission in detecting noncompliance and imposing sanctions (Kaeding 2008; Toshkov 2008). Among models that focus on the national-level factors, the “goodness-of-fit” aims to explain variation in compliance by the difference between the national-level status quo and a new directive’s aims. According to Angelova et al. (2012, p. 1274), the “goodness-of-fit” refers to the difference between the existing situation at the national level and the requirements of the new EU acquis. Still, it is operationalized differently, through either the “policy misfit” (Borzel 2000), structures of national interest groups (Duina 1997), the “the challenges that transnational rules pose on the policy legacies and interest group organization” (Duina and Blithe 1999), or the financial effort required for compliance (Falkner et al. 2005). Concentrating on the problematic implementation of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD), Marek et al. (2017) tested the explanatory power of “goodness-of-fit” and administrative capacity explanations. They found that the former explains

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

9

variations in implementation between Poland and the Czech Republic. Preeminently most problems “stemmed from the multilevel nature of the implementation process, which places a heavy administrative and financial burden on municipalities and requires cooperation between national and local government authorities.” Built as a critique of the “goodness-of-fit” approach, Mastenbroek and Kaeding (2006) advance an argument based on veto players’ institutional decision-making constraints, which consider factors such as the federal versus centralized structure, the effective number of parties, and decision-making capacity to explain variations in compliance. Hedemann-Robinson (2016) demonstrates the EU’s increased capacity to enforce environmental policies by pointing to secondary legislation and provisions to strengthen national-level environmental inspections. Another analysis that focuses on EU strategy to increase compliance describes its approach to outsource environmental legislation compliance by encouraging member states’ environmental NGOs access to national courts in parallel with the Commission’s centralized enforcement. The author stresses that while NGO activism is useful, it cannot generate the coherent and comprehensive compliance typical of a central enforcing authority (Hofmann 2019). On the other hand, the “actors’ policy preferences” approach links a country’s stance while adopting a directive to its willingness to comply with it. The interministerial coordination approach advanced by authors such as van den Bossche (1996) or Mastenbroek and Kaeding (2006) argues that inefficient interministerial coordination can hamper the timely and adequate adoption of directives. The administrative efficiency argument puts more weight on the fact that inefficient bureaucracies are more prone to following private groups’ interests (Berglund et al. 2006). The learning effects approach emphasizes the importance of continuous interaction between national administration and the EU institutions, a process that leads to an increased acceptance of EU norms (Sedelmeier 2008). The culturalist approaches consider factors such as cultural effects and domestic traditions and approaches to decision-making (Sverdrup 2004, p.  2), norms of democracy, or law observance (Falkner and Treib 2008) significant explanatory variables. Also, Braun (2016) is interested in the degree of normative diffusion and aims to understand how norms developed over time in the EU-15 can take root in the new member states. The book focuses primarily on Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania, analyzing the differences in adoption, implementation, and coordination, particularly surrounding the EU’s chemical policy. In summary, Angelova et al.’s (2012, pp. 1274–1278) evaluation of the approaches that hold explanatory power in qualitative and quantitative studies reveals that the institutional decision-making capacity and “goodness-of-fit” prove consistently powerful and hold across various operationalizations. Instead, the actor’s policy preferences and administrative efficiency arguments do not have good explanatory power. This volume builds on the analytic efforts of the Europeanization of the environmental public policy literature and aims to bring several contributions. While it is focused on one country, it proposes a comparative approach as it tackles the same set of explanatory models across very different environmental policies. This

10

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

approach allows for identifying some systematic factors that affect the implementation of environmental policies in Romania. Therefore, it can inform the reader about the sources of problems for other countries that face similar difficulties in implementing environmental legislation. The volume also represents a case study of the EU’s capacity to generate Europeanization of its member states’ environmental policy with lower administrative capacity. While much of the current literature focused on adopting EU acquis and equates the absence of infringement procedures as evidence for compliance, the sectoral analyses propose a more nuanced definition of policy implementation success. They show how, under specific circumstances, a country can avoid monitoring and avoid infringement procedures by focusing on policies’ formal aspects. Another contribution of the volume comes from its comparison of environmental policy analyses where the EU’s monitoring capacity and compliance instrument significantly vary in power. It ranges from areas with strict targets in the Accession Treaty (waste management and air pollution) to areas covered (forests) and indirectly covered (green procurement, environmentally friendly agriculture, “scrappage program”) by the acquis. Some areas are also covered by the acquis but are part of the EU’s approach and are regulated at the international level (sustainable development) or national level (Environmental Fund). The chapter dedicated to the functionality of the Environmental Fund and the Environmental Fund administration, an institution that should enforce taxation covering all the environmental policy fields and finance projects in these areas, allows the volume to compare possible differences in approach among policies. Acknowledgments  The idea for this edited volume on the Europeanization of Romania’s environmental public policies came during our participation in the Public policies for sustainable development project funded by the EU through the Operational Program Administrative Capacity and implemented by the Centre for Sustainable Policies Ecopolis. We want to thank Costel Popa and Oana Neneciu for their support in developing the book proposal idea. Deborah Renshaw played an important role in proof-reading parts of the volume during its development. Margaret Deignan and Malini Arumugam from Springer-Nature provided us constant support and were understanding with the several delays we requested. We would also like to thank Alexia Todor and Ana Helepciuc for their invaluable support during the difficult period we worked on finalizing the volume.

References Angelova, M., T. Dannwolf, and T. König. 2012. How robust are compliance findings? A research synthesis. Journal of European Public Policy 19: 1269–1291. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350176 3.2012.705051. Berglund, S., I.  Gange, and Waarden F. van. 2006. Mass production of law. Routinization in the transposition of European directives: A sociological- institutionalist account. Journal of European Public Policy 13: 692–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760600808550. Bertelsmann, S. 2017. SGI 2017 | Romania | Environmental Policies.

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

11

Bondarouk, E., and E. Mastenbroek. 2018. Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy. Environmental Policy and Governance 28: 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1761. Borzel, T.A. 2000. Why there is no “southern problem”. On environmental leaders and laggards in the European Union. J Eur Public Policy 7: 141–162. https://doi. org/10.1080/135017600343313. Börzel, T.A. 2009. Environmental Policy and the Challenge of Accession. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 32–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Börzel, T.A., and A.  Buzogány. 2019. Compliance with EU environmental law. The iceberg is melting. Environmental Politics 28: 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2019.1549772. Börzel, T.A., and U. Sedelmeier. 2017. Larger and more law abiding? The impact of enlargement on compliance in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 24: 197–215. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2016.1265575. Börzel, T.A., T.  Hofmann, D.  Panke, and C.  Sprungk. 2010. Obstinate and inefficient: Why member states do not comply with European law. Comparative Political Studies. https://doi. org/10.1177/0010414010376910. Braun, M. 2014. EU climate norms in East-Central Europe. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 445–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12101. ———. 2016. Europeanization of Environmental Policy in the New Europe: Beyond Conditionality. London: Routledge. Burns, C., P. Eckersley, and P. Tobin. 2019. EU environmental policy in times of crisis. Journal of European Public Policy: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2018.1561741. Buzogány, A. 2009. Romania: Environmental Governance — Form without Substance. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 169–191. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Carmin, J., and S.D.  VanDeveer. 2005. EU Enlargement and the Environment: Institutional Change and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Psychology Press. Cugleșan, N. 2019. Post accession compliance with EU environmental legislation in Romania and Bulgaria in the first ten years of EU membership. Conditionality and social learning, as drivers of success? Denver, Colorado. Duina, F. 1997. Explaining Legal Implementation in the European Union. Int J Sociol Law 25: 155–179. https://doi.org/10.1006/ijsl.1997.0039. Duina, F., and F. Blithe. 1999. Nation-states and common markets: the institutional conditions for acceptance. Rev Int Polit Econ 6: 494–530. https://doi.org/10.1080/096922999347146. European Commission. 2019a. July infringements package: key decisions. ———. 2019b. The Environmental Implementation Review 2019 Country Report Romania. Brussels: European Commission. ———. 2020. Romania: Environmental infringement proceedings concerning waste, nature, water and air quality. România  – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/romania/ news/20201030_infringements_mediu_ro. Accessed 4 Nov 2020. European Union. 2005. Annex VII of the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the European Union is founded EUR-Lex – 12005SA. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three worlds of compliance or four? The EU-15 compared to new member states. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. Falkner, G., O. Treib, M. Hartlapp, and S. Leiber. 2005. Complying with Europe: EU harmonisation and soft law in the member states. In Cambridge University Press. Haigh, N. 2015. EU Environmental Policy: Its Journey to Center Stage. London: Routledge. Hedemann-Robinson, M. 2016. Environmental inspections and the EU: Securing an effective role for a supranational union legal framework. Transnational Environmental Law 6: 31–58.

12

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

Hofmann, A. 2019. Left to interest groups? On the prospects for enforcing environmental law in the European Union. Environmental Politics 28: 342–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401 6.2019.1549778. Ion, O.-A. 2016. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches of Europeanization. State of the Art. In Studying Europeanization. Different Theoretical Lenses and New Methodological Approaches, ed. O.-A. Ion, 13–49. Bucharest: Tritonic. Kaeding, M. 2008. Lost in translation or full steam ahead: The transposition of EU transport directives across member states. European Union Politics 9: 115–143. Knill, C., and A. Lenschow. 2000. Introduction: New approaches to reach effective implementation - political rhetoric or sound concepts? In Implementing EU Environmental Policy: New Directions and Old Problems. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Knill, C., A. Lenschow, and P.A. Lenschow. 2000. Implementing EU Environmental Policy: New Directions and Old Problems. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Marek, D., M. Baun, and M. Dąbrowski. 2017. The challenge of implementing European Union environmental law in the new member states: The urban waste water treatment directive in the Czech Republic and Poland. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35: 1117–1135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X16686071. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization beyond the goodness of fit: Domestic politics in the forefront. Comparative European Politics 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/ palgrave.cep.6110078. Newig, J., and T.M.  Koontz. 2014. Multi-level governance, policy implementation and participation: The EU’s mandated participatory planning approach to implementing environmental policy. Journal of European Public Policy 21: 248–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350176 3.2013.834070. Orru, K., and H.  Rothstein. 2015. Not ‘Dead Letters’, Just ‘Blind Eyes’: The Europeanisation of Drinking Water Risk Regulation in Estonia and Lithuania. Environment and Planning A. https://doi.org/10.1068/a130295p. Schoenefeld, J.J., and A.J.  Jordan. 2019. Environmental policy evaluation in the EU: Between learning, accountability, and political opportunities? Environmental Politics 28: 365–384. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2019.1549782. Schreurs, M. 2005. Environmental protection in an expanding European Community: Lessons from past accessions. In EU Enlargement and the Environment: Institutional Change and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. J.  Carmin and S.D.  VanDeveer. London: Psychology Press. Sedelmeier, U. 2016. Compliance after Conditionality: Why Are the European Union’s New Member States So Good? Berlin. ———. 2008. After conditionality: Post-accession compliance with EU law in East Central Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 15: 806–825. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760802196549. Sverdrup, U. 2004. Compliance and Conflict Management in the European Union: Nordic Exceptionalism. Scand Polit Stud 27: 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­9477.2004. 00098.x. Toshkov, D. 2008. Embracing European law: Compliance with EU directives in Central and Eastern Europe. European Union Politics 9: 379–402. van den Bossche, P. 1996. In search of remedies for non-compliance: The experience of the European Community. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 3: 371–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X9600300404. Arpad Todor  is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European

1  The Long Shadow of the Past: Europeanization Meets Institutional Backwardness

13

level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within the CEU.  He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor Florenţa-Elena Helepciuc  earned B.S.c and M.Sc. degrees in plant biotechnologies from the University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest, and a Ph.D. in biology from the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy. Starting from 2006, Helepciuc FlorenţaElena has been working as a researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy in projects concerning phytopathogens biocontrol, endangered and rare plant species conservation, and plant and microbial secondary metabolites, and published several articles in these fields. Recently she has been involved in projects concerning public policies for sustainable development and biodiversity.

Chapter 2

Municipal Waste Management Arpad Todor

Abstract  Municipal waste management has emerged in the last two decades as one of the most critical European environmental policy fields regulated into detail through the acquis. As Romania had the least “goodness-of-fit” with the goals set in the acquis at the moment of accession, it required the highest number of provisional arrangements, the most significant increase in investment, and the most effort to create from scratch a new county-based system for managing waste. As the transition period expired and the targets assumed in the Accession Treaty had to be met, Romania achieved minimal success in meeting these targets. I explain this result as the structural misalignment of incentives among actors at different levels (operator, local, county, and national) brought by the chosen solutions for the new county-­ level municipal waste management systems and the pervasive lack of administrative and policy-making capacity.

2.1  Introduction Waste management, primarily municipal, generated the most problems during the negotiations of Environmental Chapter 22 during the Accession Negotiations. The waste management system in place could not meet the targets required by the acquis. Thus, closing the negotiations required the highest number of transitional derogations in Annex VII of the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the European Union is founded (Accession Treaty) (European Union 2005). Given that Romania had assumed a set of clear targets and received the EU’s financial support to achieve these targets, its path of Europeanization in this area could be easily mappable. Thus, we define municipal waste management success as avoiding infringement procedures by achieving the targets of closing noncompliant dump sites, building ecological landfills, decreasing waste landfilling, achieving the targets for A. Todor (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_2

15

16

A. Todor

recycling, and operationalizing a county-level integrated waste management system (IWMS). By 2020, while progress occurred in complying with the acquis, every target of the Accession Treaty was missed. Furthermore, with 43 infringement decisions, waste management is most problematic for Romania’s membership in the EU. This chapter aims to untangle part of the causal mechanisms that have led to this environmental policy failure. We argue that, despite the presence of financial resources in the form of EU funds, the limited policy-making capacity and the continuous structural misalignments of incentives among actors (operators, local, county, and national authorities) prevented the operationalizing of Intercommunity Development Associations (IDAs) with sufficient administrative capacity to operationalize the IWMS. We structure the chapter as follows: first, we briefly present the landmarks in the history of the EU’s waste policy evolution. Second, we discuss municipal waste management development before Romania’s EU accession and its transformation after the EU accession. Then, we propose some explanations for the observed continuous failures and discuss various models’ explanatory power to Europeanize public policies. In conclusion, we sum up the most important lessons to be learned and the contribution made by this chapter.

2.2  T  he History and Evolution of the EU acquis and Other Relevant International Conventions in the Field The EU’s waste policy has evolved over the last 30 years through a series of environmental action plans and an ever-more ambitious legislative framework. These aimed to reduce the negative impact on the environment and health and create an energy-efficient and resource-efficient system. The EU’s Sixth Environment Action Program (2002–2012) identified waste prevention and management as one of its top 4 priorities. Its main objective is to ensure that economic growth does not lead to more and more waste. This program has led to the development of a long-term waste strategy. The 2005 Thematic Strategy on Waste Prevention and Recycling led to the Waste Framework Directive revision, the cornerstone of EU waste policy (European Commission 2010, p. 4). The revision brought a modernized approach to waste management, marking a shift from thinking about waste as an unwanted burden to seeing in it an appreciated resource. The directive focused on waste prevention and implementing new targets to help the EU become a recycler. It included EU members’ targets to recycle 50% of municipal waste and 70% of construction waste by 2020. The directive introduced a definitive waste hierarchy where prevention is the best option, followed by reusing, recycling, and other recovery forms, with landfills as a last resort. The EU’s waste legislation aims to transfer waste management to the EU waste hierarchy.

2  Municipal Waste Management

17

2.3  The History of Developments in the Area of Interest Romania needed the most outstanding effort to achieve the standards set in the EU’s municipal waste policy, given the absence of a centralized approach to waste management in the country. While sanitation companies’ cover of urban population increased from 73% in 1998 to 90% by 2003, most rural localities were not covered by such companies. Municipalities organized waste transportation locally for around 6% of localities. In the rest of rural Romania, households had no alternative but to dispose of the waste themselves. By 2005, of 247 urban landfills, only 18 complied with EU legislation, most of which had to be closed by mid-2017, as stated in the Accession Treaty. At the moment of EU accession, there were 2686 dumping sites in various rural areas, all of which also had to be closed by 2009 (Schiopu et al. 2007, p. 456). One of the first infringement procedures was triggered in 2014 and focused on the failure to close 68 municipal landfills to meet Directive 1999/31/EC.  Nevertheless, all the infringement procedures opened by 2014 and 2015 were closed, and no penalties were imposed (Cugleșan 2019, p. 13). Cugleșan argues the waste management sectors in Romania and Bulgaria have a few peculiarities: “the striking misfit of their systems with the EU, the highest number of transitional arrangements, compared with other environmental areas” (Cugleșan 2019, pp. 3–4). To meet the standards of the EU acquis, Romania should have built 30 solid waste management units while closing 150 municipal landfills and 1500 illegal dump sites by 2015 (Cugleșan 2019, p. 13). Also, the recovery or incineration in energy recovery waste was set at 48% for 2010 and an overall recycling target of 50% for 2012 (European Union 2005, pp.  61–65). Even though Romania had to complete 101 noncompliant landfills by 2017 as required by Directive 1999/31/EC, progress was meager (European Commission 2019, p. 8). In 2016, the European Commission launched the Environmental Policy Implementation Assessment (EPIA). The assessment was designed to contribute to the full implementation of EU environmental legislation and closely linked to the verification of adequacy monitoring and reporting obligations in environmental policy. Its latest evaluation notes that “waste management remains a crucial challenge for Romania. Even if waste generation per capita was roughly half of the EU average, its performance continues to be characterized by very low recycling of municipal waste (14%, including 7% material recycling and 7% composting) and very high landfilling rates.” Overall, the report notes some progress in closing non-­ EU-­ compliant dumpsites, but it stresses that no improvements had been seen between 2010 and 2017, as the recycling percentage remained at 13–14% (European Commission 2019, p.  8). While the municipal waste recycling rate data from Eurostat show that while Romania progressed from just 0.4% at the moment of EU accession to a maximum of 14.8% in 2012, the rate had declined to only 11% by 2018, while the EU average had increased to 47% (Eurostat 2020). In 2016, Romania still had an astonishing 69% municipal waste going to landfill, above the 24% EU average (European Commission 2018). The situation got slightly worse, as the percentage increased to 70% in 2018 (European Commission 2019, p. 8).

18

A. Todor

2.4  Lack of Resources? A first potential explanation for Romania’s broad failure is the massive financial resources to build the new system. To meet the ambitious municipal waste management goals, Romania needed an estimated 4.8 billion euros for 2007–2013. Out of this amount, the European Commission allocated 1167.7 million Euros through the Environment Operational Program 2007–2013 Priority Axis 2.1. The overall goal of the 2.1 Axis was to develop county-level IWMS (Todor and Chiper 2014). Nevertheless, of the total of 32 projects valued at around 1.3 billion euros, only 4 projects worth about 90 million euros, less than 7 percent, have been finalized. Another 20 projects have been included in the list of nonfunctional projects, given that no operator had been contracted by 2020. Considering the ambitious set of objectives proposed for financing,1 if fully achieved, they could have provided almost half of the infrastructure needed to meet Romania’s obligations under the EU acquis. Furthermore, for the 2014–2020 programming period, another 18 projects have been funded, totaling around 850 million euros, with another ambitious infrastructure list.2 Yet, by 2019, not one project had started, and only two projects were in preparation: Galati (95 million euros) and Bucharest (208 million euros). While the availability of funds is important, as we will discuss in the next section, the complexity of implementing them could be overwhelming for the IDAs in charge of using the EU funds to operationalize the IWMS. Cugleșan (2019) argues that Romania and Bulgaria’s moderate success comes from a combination of “pre-accession conditionality and post-accession sanctioning mechanisms coupled with social learning.” The EU Commission’s dirigiste approach during negotiations forced states to upgrade their administrative capacity. While the Central Government’s administrative capacity improved, its success by 2020 is debatable, as none of the Accession Treaty targets have been reached. To recapitulate, Romania misses every target in meeting its accession obligations and the current EU acquis in municipal waste management and faces the risk of high penalties. It needs substantial investment to build the required infrastructure. It obtains most of this money from the EU but fails to spend it. Furthermore, when individual infrastructural objectives are finalized, the overall goal to operationalize the IWMS is still not achieved in many counties. What exactly can explain this? The 2019 European Commission’s evaluation concluded that the main factors that prevent progress are unstable legislation and an absence of a county IWMS, nonfunctional IWMS projects, a lack of incentive to avoid landfills through monitoring and taxing, toleration of noncompliant landfilling, incomplete monitoring of 1  The objectives achieved through SOP Environment 2007–2013 were as follows: 20 compliant landfills, 58 transfer stations, 16 composting stations, 22 sorting stations, 7 mechanical-biological treatment stations (MBTs); 39 waste collection centers, and 120 municipal landfills in urban areas. 2  Objectives, financed through Operational Program for Big Infrastructure 2014–2020, to be achieved are the following: 7 regional landfills, 16 new transfer stations and 7 extended ones, 20 new composting stations and an extended station, 17 new sorting stations and an extended station, 9 MBTs, 6 waste collection centers, and 32 municipal waste landfills in closed urban areas.

2  Municipal Waste Management

19

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes for packaging, and a lack of biowaste collection operators (European Commission 2019, p.  8). Furthermore, the evaluation underlines the limited use of EU funds to improve waste management and stresses the importance of adopting an adequate landfill tax that would fund recycling programs. While this list is relevant, it does not capture the root problems that lead to this never-ending policy failure, only its results. To understand these problems, we have to go deeper and understand the working logic of the IWMS.

2.5  The Original Sin With the completion of the negotiations under Environmental Chapter 22  – Environment and the signing of the accession treaty in 2005 – it became clear that the fulfillment of Romania’s obligations in nonhazardous waste management would be impossible without implementing an IWMS.3 The National Waste Management Strategy (SNGD) 2003–2013, developed by the Ministry of Environment and Water Management, aimed to lay the foundations for a strategic approach of multiple steps toward achieving community standards on waste management. As an intermediate step, starting in 2006, the County Councils (CCs) collaborated with the regional agencies for environmental protection and elaborated eight Regional Waste Management Plans (PRGDs) for 2006–2013. The functioning of IWMS was conditional on creating county-level Intercommunity Development Associations, as defined in the 2006 Law on Community Services of Public Utilities. Intercommunity Development Associations were designed to gather together the membership of all cities and villages under the coordination of the CCs. They were intended as the legal vehicle to allow cooperation to develop the strategy for the establishment and operation of IWMS, coordinate county policies in the field, conduct tenders to select operators, and monitor compliance with contracts. Also, they were intended to have an active role in identifying investment opportunities. Given various legal provisions, especially the Romanian Constitution, which stresses local autonomy (Art. 121), the law on IDAs highlights the voluntary nature of participating in IDAs. Nevertheless, in practice, the IDAs were formal structures created due to the imposition of a legal obligation for the CCs to access the financing offered through SOP Environment Axis 2.1. Instead of being deliberative structures, they were imposed from outside, without consultation with the primary beneficiaries. Nevertheless, as becoming a member of an IDA required the local Council’s approval, most local authorities dragged their feet across Romania and delayed this approval for years. The situation was usually aggravated when county

3  This section was presented during training on Environmental Public Policies (March 11–15, 2019), held with representatives from the Intercommunity Development Associations (IDAs).

20

A. Todor

Head of Councils belonged to different political parties than those of the municipalities, and IDAs became subject to the political skirmish. Given that operational decisions like updating the waste collection fees have to be approved in all local councils, it adds additional potential disruption sources in IDA’s functioning. Furthermore, the lack of a tradition of cooperation among these municipalities, used with a dirigiste approach to governance during the communist period, further impedes collaboration based on the need to approve every important decision both at the local and country levels. While this approach to structuring municipal waste management governance aimed to create a collaborative model of governance (Börzel 2009), its slow implementation and the lack of incentives for local authorities prevented the emergence of such an approach. As discussed in the previous section, while funds from 30 to 100 million were available for all counties, the many IDAs did not have the administrative capacity to organize complex planning, feasibility studies contracting, contracting for the execution of various facilities, and contracting for operators of the IWMS.  Given that municipal waste collection used to be organized at the local level, most local operators, whether private or owned by the municipalities, had no interest to speed up the operationalization of IWMS, given that they were most likely losers of the reorganization of waste collection. In some cases, contracts signed after 2007 had a period of 10 or up to 20 years and were somewhat incompatible with the future IWMS.  Furthermore, some of these contracts were not very clear about recycling targets’ obligations, as they have not been calculated at the county or local level. As data in Table 5.2 in Chapter 5 shows, while a landfill and failure to meet reduction of waste targets exist, the minimal revenues they bring to the Environmental Fund (EF) prove they are weakly enforced and create no pressure on the waste operators. With the move toward IWMS, local municipalities’ liberty to decide on municipal waste collection matters would decrease significantly, in terms of both costs and how this would function. Furthermore, while Romania is liable to pay significant penalties if the Accession Treaty targets are not met, neither County Councils nor Local Councils are responsible for the penalties. Thus, they do not feel the pressure to meet the national targets. The Central Government’s capacity to force a faster operationalization of IWMS is limited, given that it does not have the instruments to push or punish local authorities for moving slowly in operationalizing the IWMS. All these factors were present in more or less the same form from 2007 up to the present moment. A 2011 evaluation showed that in some counties, IDAs had not yet been created. Even where they were in existence, up to half of the communes or cities had not become members. In practice, most IDAs were constituted only after the accession (9 in 2008, 15 in 2009, 2 in 2010, and 3 in 2011). By then, Romania had to meet some of the targets dependent on the proper functioning of ADIs and the implementation of IWMSs (Todor and Chiper 2014). Additionally, as shown in Table 2.1, by 2011, of the 22 IDAs that answered the questionnaire, most of them had no employees, or just a few, a situation that made them incapable of dealing with the complex task at hand: supervising the subcontracting of the national master plan and operationalizing the IWMS.  Furthermore, 20 out of the 25 IDAs were not involved in

2  Municipal Waste Management

21

Table 2.1 The situation of Intercommunity Development Associations’ number of employees in 2011 Number of employees Relative frequency %* Absolute frequency**

0 40.9 9

1 13.64 3

2 9.09 2

3 13.65 3

4 4.55 1

5 13.63 3

11 4.55 1

Total 100 22

monitoring investment or infrastructure projects, as nothing had started. While in 2007, only two ADIs were monitoring the IWMS, and by 2010, the number had reached seven. While the situation improved in some counties more recently, the IDAs in the field continue to remain seriously understaffed. In 2008, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MESE) tried to boost this process by organizing meetings between experts in conducting feasibility studies and representatives of IDAs. The MESE’s note following the first meeting of this kind contained a few proposals on the role of CCs in IDAs and how future IWMSs should operate. According to the note, the CCs are responsible for organizing tenders, performing contracts, and paying for works and services provided in the investment project. The CCs received the task of creating dedicated monitoring units and bearing the associated costs regarding the project’s implementation and the necessary logistics. The note made it clear that the CCs only had to inform the ADIs (the local municipalities) about the progress of projects and contained no reference to any deliberative process or consultation. Overall, MESE’s analysis ignored the causes of delays and ignored the town halls’ and local councils’ role in the proper functioning of IDAs. As the years passed, most transitional agreements expired, and various infringement procedures were triggered, while the lack of involvement by local authorities and IDAs has remained constant. Overall, most provisions of the Law of the Sanitation Service of the Localities no. 101 of April 25, 2006, were only scantly monitored. A 2017 evaluation (Ecologic 2017) reveals that most of the problems identified in 2008 had not been solved. Both legislative issues and the lack of local authorities’ involvement prolonged the tenders to select operators of the IWMS. Even worse, many of the contracts signed in this period had no provisions to impose separate collection activity, including sorting, composting, and mechanical-biological treatment. It is also the case with Romania’s biggest city, Bucharest, which explains why no progress in operationalizing an IWMS has been achieved. Furthermore, as any approval of the fee charged by the operators has to be approved by all local authorities that are part of an IDA, this process is frequently delayed, as the IDAs or the operators of IWMS have only minimal capacity to constrain local authorities. By 2018, out of the 42 counties in Romania, only 10 had a fully functional IWMS.  Another 27 counties and the Delta of Danube Reservation had approved master plans. In comparison, five counties and the capital still had no such master plan for IWMS approved (Ministry of Environment of Romania 2018).

22

A. Todor

2.6  Lessons Learned? Not Really While the mismatch of incentives at the local level is much more challenging to solve, we could expect that at least at the central level, conditionality and post-­ accession infringements should have created the conditions to develop higher institutional capacity. The implementation of the EU Waste Framework Directive (Directive 2008/98/EC) on the circular economy showed this was hardly the case. Directive 2008/98/EC aims to protect the environment and human health by preventing or reducing the negative impact of waste production and management and reducing the overall effect of resource use and improving service efficiency. The National Plans are also instrumental in accessing EU funds to develop the infrastructure needed to operationalize the NWMPs (European Commission 2017). Considering that Romania was the member state with the lowest municipal waste disposal performance, updating the plan according to Directive 2008/98/EC should have been a top priority. The directive required all member states to update their National Waste Management Plan and waste prevention program (NWMP) by 2010. After a series of warnings, in April 2017, the European Commission sued Romania at the EU Court of Justice to adopt its NWMP (European Commission 2017). Romania’s National Waste Management Plan was approved by GD no. 942/12.20.2017. This plan also contains the National Waste Generation Prevention Program (Ministerul Mediului 2018). The process for its elaboration has been quite complex, with a series of reports for its substantiation: a legislative analysis report, institutional analysis report, existing data analysis report and infrastructure analysis report, a report on future objectives and modalities, alternative achievement report, an infrastructure plan, as well as a financial model and an action plan. Nevertheless, a close analysis of the document and reports reveals no analysis of the causes that determined the delays triggering the infringement procedure initiation. Furthermore, some of the targets set in the NWMP further delayed some of the Accession Treaty targets. Even worse, no relevant investment efforts have been implemented to make possible the achievement of any of its targets, not even those aiming to close noncompliant landfills by 2020 and significantly increase recycling rates (European Commission 2019, p. 8).

2.7  W  hat Europeanization in Municipal Waste Management Means? The 5-year delay in adopting the NWMP indicates that Romania did not even achieve its aim of focusing on the formal aspects of rule compliance in municipal waste management while avoiding more substantive changes (Selin and Van Deveer 2015). According to Cugleșan (2019, p. 13), one of the core reasons for the lack of progress was the low coordination capacity between national and local levels and the associated costs. While Romania did adopt the EU acquis in waste management,

2  Municipal Waste Management

23

its efforts to enforce the legislation through monitoring and inspections were not sufficient, but not “dead letters” (Falkner and Treib 2008). While our analysis partially confirms the argument put forward by Cugleșan and the European Commission (2019, p. 8), we show that an essential part of this lack of progress comes from the inefficient solution chosen for creating the IWMS, especially the mismatch of incentives. While Romania, as a state, is liable for not complying with the acquis, local- and county-level authorities are not. Even if technically they could be responsible for any Commission’s penalties, this is a highly improbable scenario. Furthermore, the municipal waste operators had no interest in speeding up the operationalization of the IWMS. The evolutions by 2020 confirm Falkner and Treib’s (2008) pessimistic view on conditionality efficiency in the post-­ accession environment. Nevertheless, developments in this policy field are not accurately described as behavior defined by formal compliance as a world of revenge or dead-letter regimes. Efforts are constant, investments from EU funds slowly advance, and IWMS is becoming operational. However, the substantive targets for diminishing waste disposal and increasing recycling fail to gain traction, and the Ministry of Environment’s4 understanding of the causal problems of Romania’s approach to municipal waste management has not progressed. Orru and Rothstein’s (2015) argument regarding the “blind eye policy” some states employ to implement EU directives gives some insight into Romania’s evolution. The county and central authorities’ incapacity to identify those solutions that would speed investments and operationalize the IWMS comes rather from the path dependency brought by a solution that proved inefficient from the beginning. As most financial resources to operationalize the IWMS are costly, and noncompliance can generate heavy penalties, central and county-level authorities’ incentives should be appropriately aligned to meet the targets. Furthermore, as the waste management sector is vulnerable to corruption (Euractiv 2014), this factor can contribute to the continuous delays in operationalizing transparent IWMS. Although no definitive evidence exists, there were numerous accusations that various politicians had a direct interest in delaying the operationalization of IWMS, as they would have decreased the profitability of many businesses linked to politicians. Also, as exporting waste outside the EU has become more difficult, Romania has become an important recipient country (AFP-Agence France 2020). Nevertheless, this import is profitable only as long as it is dumped on noncompliant landfills (BBC 2019). Also, the presence of transnational interest in waste export to Romania makes progress even more difficult. The newly operationalized European Public Prosecutors’ Office should have the ability to tackle such complex cases. Our analysis’s most important implication for the broader field of Europeanization literature comes from highlighting that the causal coupling of different explanatory variables can be unique to different policy areas and countries.

4  Its name and composition have recently changed. As of October 2020, it is the Ministry of Environment, Waters and Forests.

24

A. Todor

Bondarouk and Mastenbroek’s (2018) typology of various stages of EU environmental policy is very useful. The authors focus on implementing environmental policies and propose a distinction between final policy formation and the efforts to operationalize policy through various decisions that solve issues that arrive during the implementation. Policy formation means that the overall execution is partitioned into a series of implementation tasks. The policy needs an adequate authority assignment, timetables are established, and resources are distributed. Once this stage is completed, the policy delivery stage can proceed. Romania’s efforts to achieve its Accession Treaty targets by constructing a new municipal waste management system centered around county-level IWMS shows the importance of adapting the final policy formation decisions to the outstanding blockages that appear during the policy delivery stage. The insights brought by various Europeanization models help us better illuminate municipal waste management evolution in Romania. Romania’s benefits started with the least “goodness-of-fit” approach to waste management, as it had to create a new system from scratch. Thus, the directives’ complexity could be considered as high as possible, given the complexity of creating a new approach based on county-­ level IWMS and NWMPs. Given that compliance in achieving recycling targets, limiting waste disposal, opening EU-compliant waste disposal sites, operationalizing a county-level IWMS, and adopting NWMPs, Commission’s capacity to monitor evolutions has been easily achieved. Instead, evidence indicates that operationalizing the EU acquis in municipal waste management was impossible without a properly functioning IWMS.  Our findings support Mastenbroek and Kaeding’s (2006) argument that when the implementation of specific acquis depend on a very complex set of veto players and when significant constraints are put on decision-maker, compliance can be challenging. Overall, Romania’s approach to implementing the IWMS was an inclusive one. It required the active involvement of local, county, and national authorities and thus a new model of governance (Börzel 2009). Yet, this approach failed to generate a coherent framework where participants would become involved stakeholders. On the one hand, the minimal interinstitutional coordination, especially in creating a set of incentives that would align the goals of all administrative levels involved (local, county, and central), appears to be the main factor that explains this permanent failure. On the other hand, the limited resources allocated to the IDAs and their incapacity to organize the tender process led to endless delays in operationalizing the IWMS. While this was expected for the first years after accession, the lack of progress by 2020, combined with the lack of progress in designing better waste management plans, raises questions on the presence of learning effects as effects of Romania’s continuous participation in the EU. Overall, this chapter partially confirms Angelova et al.’s (2012, pp. 1274–1278) identification of institutional decision-­ making capacity and “goodness-of-fit” proven consistently as powerful tools to understand compliance. Nevertheless, these models have to be complemented with the insight brought by the administrative efficiency argument. Overall, the chapter explains how the limited progress is caused by a combination of structural misalignments of incentives among actors at different levels (operators, local, county, and

2  Municipal Waste Management

25

national), combined with a pervasive lack of administrative and policy-making capacity.

2.8  Conclusions In this chapter, we aimed to evaluate the degree to which Romania’s municipal waste management after EU accession can be considered a success. We define success in terms of both the formal aspects of avoiding infringement procedures and achieving the policy’s end goals. Considering the latest data and policy evolutions, we have concluded that these evolutions have been characterized by constant failure. Worst, it appears that no consistent progress in Romania’s capacity to deal with this policy field has occurred in the 13 years since its accession. We then set out to untangle the causal mechanisms that explain this lack of progress. We reflected on the work of Cugleșan (2019) and Buzogány (2009) and built our analysis on a previous evaluation by Todor and Chiper (2014). Our study shows that creating a municipal waste management system that had no “goodness-of-fit” with the old approach moved very slowly as the proposed policy solution could not align the incentives of local, county, and central actors, despite the availability of financial resources. This chapter’s main contribution consists of showing how the EU’s monitoring and forcing compliance capacity could be rendered inefficient if the actors that have to put most efforts in policy implementation do not face backlaws if they do not achieve progress. What could be the next steps to improve the problem? The European Commission (2019, p. 8) identifies local authorities’ incapacity to manage complex investment projects, a lack of ownership, and ineffective tender procedures as the main factors that explain the limited progress in operationalizing IWMS. It reiterates the recommendation presented in Bibro (2017) regarding the need to develop a coherent set of standards, introduce penalty mechanisms for local authorities, implement a landfill tax, establish nationwide capacity-building programs, and improve the functioning of Extended Producer Responsibility systems. While we agree with these recommendations, we stress that they still miss the deeper root cause of a lack of ownership in the misalignment of incentives. Without changing the formal rules to align these incentives better, a more efficient approach to corruption in the field, no significant progress should be expected. Also, more involvement of civil society and other stakeholders in the functioning of IDAs could bring a further impetus in this field. Acknowledgments  Special thanks to Lavinia Andrei, Natalia Cugleșa, and Florența-Elena Helepciuc for providing valuable suggestions on improving the draft version of this chapter.

26

A. Todor

References AFP-Agence France A-AF. 2020. Activists Concerned Over Increase In Waste Smuggling In Romania. Angelova, M., T. Dannwolf, and T. König. 2012. How robust are compliance findings? A research synthesis. Journal of European Public Policy 19: 1269–1291. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350176 3.2012.705051. BBC. 2019. Why does Romania, a country overflowing with rubbish, import more from abroad? Romania Insider. https://www.romania-­insider.com/bbc-­romania-­waste-­import. Accessed 3 Nov 2020. Bibro. 2017. Support to selected Member States in improving hazardous waste management based on assessment of Member States’ performance. Brussels: European Commission. Bondarouk, E., and E. Mastenbroek. 2018. Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy. Environmental Policy and Governance 28: 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1761. Börzel, T.A. 2009. Environmental Policy and the Challenge of Accession. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 32–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Buzogány, A. 2009. Romania: Environmental Governance — Form without Substance. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 169–191. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Cugleșan, N. 2019. Post accession compliance with EU environmental legislation in Romania and Bulgaria in the first ten years of EU membership. Conditionality and social learning, as drivers of success? Denver, Colorado. Ecologic. 2017. O situaţie a Sistemelor de Management Integrat al Deşeurilor (A situation of Integrated Waste Management Systems). Bucharest. Euractiv. 2014. Waste business ‘very vulnerable to corruption.’ www.euractiv.com. https://www. euractiv.com/section/sustainable-­dev/news/waste-­business-­very-­vulnerable-­to-­corruption/. Accessed 3 Nov 2020. European Commission. 2010. Being wise with waste: The EU’s approach to waste management. European Commission. ———. 2017. Waste: Commission refers Romania to Court of Justice for failing to adopt national measures on waste management and waste prevention. ———. 2018. Romania. From waste to resources. Luxembourg. ———. 2019. The Environmental Implementation Review 2019 Country Report Romania. Brussels: European Comission. European Union. 2005. Annex VII of the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the European Union is founded EUR-Lex – 12005SA. Eurostat. 2020. Recycling rate of municipal waste. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab= table&init=1&plugin=1&pcode=t2020_rt120&language=en. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States*. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit: Domestic Politics in the Forefront. Comparative European Politics 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/ palgrave.cep.6110078. Ministerul Mediului. 2018. Planul National de Gestionare a Deseurilor (PNGD). http://mmediu.ro/ categorie/planul-­national-­de-­gestionare-­a-­deseurilor-­pngd/239. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. Ministry of Environment of Romania. 2018. Regarding question nr. 3974A/02.05.2018 regarding the state of implementation of the Sistem for Integrated Waste Management.

2  Municipal Waste Management

27

Orru, K., and H.  Rothstein. 2015. Not ‘Dead Letters’, Just ‘Blind Eyes’: The Europeanisation of Drinking Water Risk Regulation in Estonia and Lithuania. Environment and Planning A. https://doi.org/10.1068/a130295p. Schiopu, A.-M., I. Apostol, M. Hodoreanu, and M. Gavrilescu. 2007. Solid Waste in Romania: Management, Treatment And Pollution Prevention Practices. Environmental Engineering and Management Journal 6: 451–465. Selin H, Van Deveer SD (2015) EU Environmental Policy Making and Implementation: Changing Processes and Mixed Outcomes. Todor, A., and M. Chiper. 2014. ADI – Deşeuri: Starea de fapt. In Analize de politici publice cu impact asupra mediului şi dezvoltării durabile. Bucureşti: Wolters Kluwer. Arpad Todor  is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within the CEU.  He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor

Chapter 3

Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related EU Policies, and Their Domestic Implementation Ines Gavrilut, Lukas Feiler, and Metodi Sotirov

Abstract  This chapter provides an actor-centered assessment of the governance of forests and protected areas in Romania. It investigates the implementation of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and its effectiveness in addressing illegal timber logging and trade. We use an analytical framework based on the Europeanization theory and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). In line with the Europeanization literature, we find that in the case of EU forestry policy, a non-acquis policy area partly characterized by a lack of clear EU legal basis and partly by EU policy and legal (dis)integration paradox, national decision-makers responded to pressures to integrate nature conservation into forestry. Domestic actors, allied in a social-­ environmental advocacy coalition, could use EU rules, strategic cooperation, and links with the broader EU good governance plan to improve domestic forest policy procedures and limit state capture. However, the practical implementation of the EUTR and the EU nature and biodiversity policy is jeopardized by forest overexploitation and illegal logging linked to weak law enforcement capacity, widespread corruption, unsolved policy and institutional deficiencies notably regarding private forest ownership, and counterproductive effects of “successful” EU market integration and foreign investment forces.

I. Gavrilut (*) Chair of Remote Sensing and Landscape Information Systems (FeLis), University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] L. Feiler · M. Sotirov Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_3

29

30

I. Gavrilut et al.

3.1  Introduction Over the past decades, policy and science have recognized deforestation and forest degradation as major environmental issues. Illegal timber logging, associated with fragile political frameworks, weak law enforcement, vested economic interests, and low socioeconomic conditions in developing and transitioning countries have been identified as critical drivers of destruction and unsustainable use of natural and managed forest ecosystems (Taconni 2007). At the same time, forests are named in the UN Sustainable Development Goal 15: “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, (…) and halt biodiversity loss” (UN 2016). A global forest convention is still missing due to North-South conflicts, and there are only non-legally binding arrangements under the UNFF or the CBD1 (Pokorny et  al. 2019). Nevertheless, the legally binding 2015 Paris Agreement (Article 5) requires participating states to “take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases (...) including forests”2 (UNFCCC 2015). To meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement and avert dangerous climate change, the EU adopted the LULUCF Regulation in 2018. It requires EU member states to monitor and account for forest carbon sinks and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector, including forest management (EU 2018). In our understanding, policies are successful when they achieve their goals (e.g., EUTR – addressing illegal logging). Romania has a total forest area of 6.86 million ha covering 28.8% of the national territory, from which 2.6 million ha are located within protected areas for nature conservation (FAO 2014). Deforestation and forest degradation linked to illegal logging,3 illegal timber trade, and overexploitation are pervasive issues in Romania, with severe economic, social, and environmental impacts. Estimations4 of illegal logging range from 1–10% to 50% of the total timber volume harvested yearly (Bouriaud 2005; Nichiforel and Nichiforel 2011; EIA 2015). Findings from satellite image analysis indicate that between 2000 and 2010, forest cover declined by 1.3%, with substantial forest disturbances found in old-growth forests inside protected areas (Knorn et  al. 2012; Griffiths et  al. 2012). These trends of forest loss and fragmentation are particularly worrisome, as Romania harbors some of Europe’s last and most extensive old-growth primary forests (Veen et al. 2010), as well as the  United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), “sinks” are defined as “any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.” The world’s forests and other wooded lands as key terrestrial sinks present a significant global carbon stock, as they are estimated to sequester over 485 gigatons of carbon (UNFCCC 2020). 3  Are defined as “the infringement of forest law and regulations for forest management,” while illegal forest practices also include illegal timber processing, illegal trade of wood and wood products, and illegal transportation (Bouriaud and Niskanen 2003; Gavrilut et al. 2015). 4  Another study concluded that 20 million m3 of wood were illegally harvested during 2013–2018, while state authorities only detected 1% thereof (Greenpeace Romania 2019). 1 2

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

31

largest populations of brown bear, gray wolf, and lynx (Ioras et al. 2009). Generally, the Carpathians are of great importance to nature conservation. They include Europe’s most extensive mountain range and continuous temperate forest ecosystem, rich in biodiversity and relatively undisturbed compared to Western Europe (UNEP 2007; Anfodillo et al. 2008). This chapter builds on a review of relevant research and two empirical studies by the chapter authors conducted in 2015 and 2018, respectively, investigating (1) the domestic implementation of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and its effectiveness and (2) domestic forest policy change and stability in Romania. Both studies have an actor-centered approach, exploring the beliefs, values, and interests of Romanian state and non-state policy actors by using key informant interviews and policy document analysis as main research methods. Besides, a literature review was used to account for the implementation of the EU Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive, emphasizing the Natura 2000 network of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs).

3.2  T  he History and Evolution of the EU acquis and Relevant International Legislation Natura 2000 is the core pillar of the EU’s nature protection and biodiversity conservation policy and law. It is an EU-wide ecological network of protected areas that cuts across countries’ borders, administrative levels, policy areas, and socioeconomic contexts. The network is established and managed according to the legally binding provisions of the 1979 EU Birds Directive (79/409/EEC, revised in 2009) and the 1992 EU Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC). Natura 2000 aims to ensure biodiversity conservation in combination with the sustainable development of land and natural resources. It can allow for the continuation of land uses (e.g., forestry, agriculture) as long as they contribute to or do not significantly compromise conservation objectives for habitats and species within and beyond the Natura 2000 network. Forests are of crucial importance for Natura 2000 and vice versa. Almost 50% of the Natura 2000 network consists of forests EU-wide (Sotirov 2017). The network covers 22.7% of Romania’s land territory (EC 2019). Natura 2000 was part of Romania’s accession negotiations, and transposing domestic legislation was adopted (Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014). By their accession day (January 1, 2007), Romania and Bulgaria were required to have transposed into national legislation the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. They provided a complete list of Natura 2000 site proposals. Discussions with these countries continued until 2006, with further proposals (Evans et  al. 2013). Although the accession process was not smooth or easy, it played a role in democratizing civil society (Börzel and Buzogány 2010) and strengthening environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). The transposition process mobilized many national government officials and technical experts (Evans et al. 2013).

32

I. Gavrilut et al.

In contrast to EU nature and biodiversity policy, and until 2010, forest policy has remained a national, non-acquis policy area, not addressed in the accession negotiations. The EU has limited direct legal leverage here, which can be derived only from the non-legally binding 1999 and 2013 EU Forest Strategies and associated Forest Action Plans (Winkel and Sotirov 2016; Sotirov and Storch 2018; Sotirov and Winkel 2016). However, by a cross-sectoral “spillover” logic, the EU conservation legislation became increasingly relevant for domestic forest policy since forest habitats and species were part of the annexes and national lists of protected areas under the Birds and Habitats Directives. This made forest policy an area without a formal EU legal basis and disintegrated across different EU legislative pieces, while also characterized by a (dis)integration paradox. This is because, despite repeated calls for policy integration, the sector remains disintegrated, reflecting the different existing economic interests, beliefs, and sectoral policy boundaries (Winkel and Sotirov 2016). In 2010, in the framework of the 2003 EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, the EU adopted the EU Timber Regulation No. 995/2010 (EUTR), which came into force in 2013 (Sotirov et al. 2017). The EUTR bans the placement of illegally sourced timber and timber products on the EU internal market regardless if they are supplied by/from EU operators or by/from timber imports (e.g., from tropical countries). The EUTR requires economic operators5 who place timber and timber products on the EU market for the first time to exercise due diligence (DD) through a precautionary risk-based system. It also requires timber traders to keep appropriate records of their suppliers and customers (EU 2010). A DD system is a risk management mechanism that helps minimize the risk of placing illegally harvested timber on the internal market and must have three key elements: access to information, risk assessment, and risk mitigation. Operators can either develop their DD system or use one created by a monitoring organization recognized by the European Commission (EU 2010). Under the EUTR, competent national authorities6 must be nominated and empowered to conduct regular checks on operators and traders and apply penalties in cases of non-compliance. Member states are required to implement EUTR and, to this end, to lay down effective, proportionate, and dissuasive penalties for EUTR infringements (EU 2010). The EUTR also empowers third parties, such as citizens, NGOs, and economic operators, to submit substantiated concerns to competent authorities to investigate cases of non-­ compliance. Finally, it recognizes the third party (sustainability and legality) certification schemes as a useful tool for risk assessment and mitigation. However, private regulation sustainability schemes and their standards (e.g., FSC, PEFC) are not officially recognized as authorization or “green lane” of legal compliance with the DD obligations under the EUTR (Sotirov et al. 2017). 5  EUTR defines “operator” as any natural or legal person who places timber or timber products on the EU internal market and “trader” as any natural or legal person who sells or buys timber or timber products already placed on the market (EU 2010). 6  In Romania, the competent authority is currently the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Forests (MMAP).

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

33

3.3  T  he History of Policy Developments on Forests and Protected Areas in Romania Since the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, Romania has gone through rapid and substantial socioeconomic and institutional transformations due to the transition to a market economy. For the Romanian forest sector, the most significant changes were the forest industry’s privatization, the restitution of property to non-state forest owners, and national laws with EU legislation. Although Romania, together with Bulgaria, joined the EU in 2007 after successfully negotiating and meeting political, socioeconomic, and policy/legal standards for EU accession, significant challenges remain. The most notable are tackling illegal timber logging and developing a suitable institutional framework for privately owned forests (Angelova et al. 2009). Following three restitution laws (18/1991, 1/2000, and 247/2005), almost 51% of Romanian forestlands were returned to former non-state owners (Scriban et al. 2019). The aim was to restore the forest ownership structure that existed before forest nationalization in 1948. This process created around 800,000 “new” communal, collective, religious, educational, and other private forest owners, managing over 3 million hectares of forest, albeit mostly fragmented (Abrudan et  al. 2009; Marinchescu et al. 2014; Halalisan et al. 2018). Figure 3.1 shows the forest ownership changes in Romania over the past 60 years (Nichiforel et al. 2015). Under this new ownership structure, the implementation of sustainable forest management (SFM) became a highly challenging task (Strimbu et al. 2005). Forest disturbance levels significantly increased since 1989 and particularly after each restitution law, with a slight decrease after 2007 (Kuemmerle et al. 2009; Knorn et al. 2013; Griffiths et al. 2012; Mihai et al. 2017). With natural disturbances (e.g., forest fires) in the Carpathians playing a limited role, these trends have been linked to excessive timber logging in restituted forests (Knorn et al. 2012; Nichiforel et al. 2015; Scriban et  al. 2019). Nearly half of the forest areas privatized under Law 18/1991 were clear-cut or overharvested by 2002 (Nichiforel 2005). Furthermore, 15% of the restituted forest area was deforested by 2006 (Angelova et al. 2009). However, there is also concern about the evolution of illegal logging in state-owned forests. Official statistics reveal that (1) in public forests during 1990–2011, the volume of illegally harvested timber grew to a peak in 1992 (281,517  m2), then descending with annual fluctuations, and (2) in private forests managed by the National Forest Administration (NFA), Romsilva,7 illegal logging grew steadily during 2005–2011 (194,600 m2 for the whole period). In total, estimations show that during 1990–2011, 80 million m3 were illegally harvested (Romanian Court of Accounts 2013). The National Forest Inventory (NFI) 2013–2018 shows that 38.6 7  The National Forest Administration (NFA), Romsilva, is in charge of the administration of state-­ owned forests and is functioning under the authority of the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Forests. It also manages some non-state forests on a (voluntary) contractual basis and provides a few extension services for small-scale private forest owners (Sotirov 2014).

34

I. Gavrilut et al.

Fig. 3.1  Development of forest ownership in Romania. (Nichiforel et al. 2015)

million m3 of timber were harvested annually instead of the 18 million m3 legally allowed cut. However, it remains unclear how much of the 20 million m3 difference is attributable to illegal logging. The methodology, data, and other factors of the two inventory periods (2008–2012 and 2013–2018) also play a role (WWF 2019). Since the early 2000s, the Romanian timber industry sector has grown through (EU) foreign direct investment (Kärkkäinen 2008). With the EU accession, it became part of the EU common market. Thus, foreign firms and individual investors started buying forestland and establishing forest management units. Large international timber companies gradually replaced small ones  (Angelova et  al. 2009). ENGOs, civil society groups, and scientists have found more and more direct links between illegal logging and the timber processing and bigger forest industry sector (Greenpeace Romania 2012, 2015; WWF 2015; EIA 2015, 2016).

3.4  Evolution of National Policies and Their Implementation The forest policy and legislative system in Romania consist of the Forest Code, the implementing acts, and the technical norms. The Forest Code is the normative act imposing the forest regime, i.e., regulating all forest-related activities, and is implemented through around 150 different legal acts (Nichiforel et al. 2015). Before it acceded to the EU, Romania’s forests were regulated by the Forest Code of 1996 (Law 26/1996), which was revised in 2008 (Law 46/2008). Despite the stated forest

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

35

protection goals, many provisions8 of the 2008 Forest Code could not be enforced due to lack of implementation mechanisms, with negative impacts on forest conservation (Nichiforel et al. 2015; Drăgoi and Toza 2019). One key issue is linked to the forest restitution governance and regulatory framework, which largely failed to adapt the forest sector to the challenges of private forest ownership and changing market forces. Although the restitution process started in 1991, control bodies for private forestry were only established in 2000 and a legal framework for private forest management structures only after 2004 (Scriban et  al. 2019). Like in other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, forest management rights are strongly restricted for Romania’s private owners. Only forests with a forest management plan (FMP)9 can be harvested, whereas forest owners cannot influence FMPs (Bouriaud et al. 2013). Compensations for revenues lost due to environmental protection constraints (e.g., in Natura 2000 sites) were foreseen by the 2008 Forest Code but never implemented (Scriban et  al. 2019). At the same time, forest restitution fragmented forests over small areas, often under 10  ha.10 Under the 2008 Forest Code, owners of forest areas smaller than 100 ha (who did not associate with others to request common FMPs) were not allowed to harvest due to lack of FMP.11 Our empirical results show that this situation led many forest owners to leave their forests unmanaged and illegal logging  took place, both by the owners themselves and by other actors. Although there seems to be a mentality change among forest owners toward forest conservation, the lack of state aid and forest revenues and the taxation burden do not facilitate this shift. Scholars have also found that forest restitution worked as a “trade-off between politicians’ interest in winning political capital and owner’s interest in getting short-term benefits from the forest” (Scriban et al. 2019). The 2015 revised Forest Code (Law 133/2015) was considered a more systematic approach against corruption and illegal logging. It kept command and control instruments (e.g., FMP). However, it brought a significant change to private forestry as it allowed timber harvesting (up to 3 m3/year/ha) for small forest tenures of up to 10  ha. It also included financial mechanisms to compensate owners for existing constraints; however, these have not been implemented (Scriban et al. 2019). Other policy changes include anti-monopoly measures12 and mapping of primary forests 8  Two examples are the forest watch subsidies foreseen for private forests smaller than 30 ha and the payments for ecosystem services laid down already in the 1996 Forest Code (Drăgoi and Toza 2019). 9  The forest management plan (FMP) is the main forest governance instrument in Romania. It is a set of top-down compulsory rules on timber harvesting. FMP is compulsory for all forests and applies for 10 years. 10  The first land restitution law (18/1991) restored small forest tenures of up to 1 ha. In contrast, the third restitution law (247/2005) enabled the full restoration of private lands to former owners (Scriban et al. 2019). 11  Under current legislation, FMPs are conducted for forests with a minimum area of 100 ha. All forest areas exceeding 10 ha need to be covered by an FMP. 12  “An economic operator/group of economic operators cannot acquire/process more than 30% of the volume of an industrial assortment of wood of each species, established as an average of the

36

I. Gavrilut et al.

(Feiler 2018).13 The latest Forest Code revision (September 2020) brought about additional steps. These include the confiscation of equipment used for illegal timber transports, the definition of tree thefts as a crime regardless of the prejudice value, the prohibition of clear-cuts in nature reserves, and the mandatory environmental assessment for FMPs that overlap with protected areas. It also included modifying the wood material’s definition to include sawdust (Parliament of Romania 2020). National legislation transposing the EU Birds and Habitats Directives14 is influencing forest management decisions. For Natura 2000 sites in forests, FMPs need to be coordinated with the Natura 2000 management plans (Nichiforel et al. 2015). However, while Romania has made progress in preparing Natura 2000 site management plans, the European Commission reported that the (former) Ministry of Waters and Forests did not provide access to FMPs to the (former) Ministry of Environment.15 Nevertheless, allowing access was vital for the effective implementation of the Natura 2000 network. The report also noticed that Romania’s Natura 2000 network suffered from a lack of appropriate administrative capacity framework, spatial planning, and updated knowledge and data. Cases of illegal timber logging in Natura 2000 sites are still threatening nature conservation goals to ensure effective implementation of Natura 2000 at the local and regional level (EC 2019). There is a growing need to improve cooperation and communication between site managers, state authorities, land and forest owners, and NGOs. Mitigation measures to address land use projects’ environmental impact on Natura 2000 sites are still not properly enforced (ECA 2017). In 2008, Romania introduced an integrated information system for wood tracking, in short “SUMAL,” aiming to eliminate risks of illegal practices along wood product value chains. With a significant delay to the March 2013 deadline, the EUTR was formally implemented through the governmental decision (HG) 470/2014 revised by HG 1.004/2016 (Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration 2016), introducing the obligation for timber market operators to use a due diligence system as of 2015. It upgraded SUMAL with a more comprehensive wood tracking system known as the “Forest Radar” designed to monitor timber transports in real time via GPS along the upstream value chain: from timber harvest last 3 years based on authorized exploitation documents and exploited at the national level, regardless of the form of ownership” (Romanian Parliament 2015). 13  In spring 2020, a new Forest Code amendment proposal was being debated in the Parliament. Two possible revisions under discussion were treating “tree theft” as a crime regardless of the prejudice value and selling only harvested timber, as opposed to the current timber selling system of still-standing trees based on volume approximations (Greenpeace Romania 2020). 14  For instance, Law 95/2016 regarding the establishment of the National Agency for Protected Natural Areas and the modification of the Government Emergency Ordinance 57/2007 regarding the regime of protected natural areas and conservation of natural habitats and of the flora and fauna (National Agency for Protected Areas 2020) 15  The Ministry of Water and Forests was formerly in charge of forests and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change responsible for nature conservation, among other issues. The two ministries were reorganized into the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Forests (MMAP), which is organized through the governmental decision (HG) 43/2020.

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

37

to processing or export. It required all involved state and non-state actors to report timber harvesting and transportation corresponding documents into a national database to be cross-checked. It also allowed concerned citizens to call and report suspect timber transports to be checked in real time via SUMAL. In 2016, this was further developed into the “Forest Inspector,” an online platform allowing users to identify illegal logging in real time using the SUMAL database and satellite imagery. In 2018, the Environmental Guard launched an additional mobile application enabling citizens to report forest habitat and species protection (e.g., poaching, logging, fires, pollution) (EC 2019).

3.5  E  ffect of Previous Policies in Terms of Relevance, Effectiveness, and Efficiency Our results show that the implementation of the  EUTR in Romania is slow and complex and not yet ensuring the legal, and by this means, sustainable management of Romanian forests. Key reasons are that it could not fix existing deficiencies in national laws and their problematic enforcement and that it could not address corruption and other underlying drivers of illegal timber logging and trade. Moreover, enforcing traceability measures and sanctions in line with the EUTR requires appropriate capacity, including financial, technical, and human resources, both for the target groups and authorities. Expert interviews reveal that the 2008 SUMAL system has never been fully enforced, as centralized data were never correctly checked and monitored, and key implementation elements were missing. These are notably the high-precision, high-frequency satellite images that would allow accurate GPS-­ tracking of wood transports  as well as  the video cameras on roads and at wood warehouses to automatically check and validate wood transports. A SUMAL 2.0. version based on geographic information systems (GIS), including these and other elements, has been developed. Gavrilut et al. (2015) recently analyzed the interaction between forest management, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, and the EUTR implementation in Romania. The authors found that supported by NGOs and multinational retailers, and usually setting higher ecological and social standards for responsible forest management including the legality, the FSC chain of custody (CoC) certification helped companies prepare for and align with the EUTR’s formal requirements. In particular, it concerned risk assessment and risk mitigation procedures needed for a DD system. FSC worked to align all components of FSC certification and standards with the EUTR requirements. The interviewed FSC-certified companies and NGOs confirmed this in Romania. They generally believe that certification plays a vital role in fulfilling EUTR requirements. It is useful for mitigating the risk of trading illegal timber and/or facilitating information access and risk assessment of the suppliers. However, difficulties remain concerning the lack of information, costs, and bureaucratic burden associated with EUTR implementation and FSC

38

I. Gavrilut et al.

certification (Gavrilut et al. 2015). The withdrawal of FSC certifications demanded and monitored by civil society organizations (Declic 2017) could be a powerful tool for influencing timber companies’ market position and behavior.16

3.6  M  ain Explanatory Models Proposed in the Scientific Literature This chapter draws on theoretical concepts from the Europeanization theory and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). The Europeanization framework17 examines the domestic impact of Europe and its causal mechanisms (Börzel and Risse 2003; Börzel and Buzogány 2010; Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014; Sotirov et  al. 2015). Domestic policy and institutional changes occur along two causal mechanisms (Börzel and Risse 2003). First, European policies and institutions can redistribute domestic power resources (Börzel 2005) and offer new opportunities for state and non-state actors to use supranational power to influence domestic change (Marks and McAdam 1996). Strategically crossing multiple governance levels not only benefits the European Commission (EC), which has limited direct enforcement capacities, but is also a promising strategy for non-state actors (Della Porta and Caiani 2009). The “pull” from a domestic mobilization of non-state actors is often followed by a “push” from above by supranational institutions, where state and non-­ state actors often build multi-level coalitions (Börzel 2003). Second, Europeanization can drive domestic change through a knowledge-based mechanism facilitated by participatory professional forums and agents of normative change, who use scientific knowledge, exchange of experience, media campaigns, and persuasive moral arguments to demand, or restrict, policy change (Börzel and Risse 2003). EU policy is effectively implemented if two conditions are fulfilled: (1) the policy is fully incorporated into national law and conflicting national rules are amended or repealed (formal implementation), and (2) state authorities provide administrative resources to enforce policies, as well as monitor, encourage, or coerce rule-consistent behavior through incentives and sanctions (practical implementation) (Börzel 2003). These changes can be conceived as the EU’s impact to change domestic environmental governance or the transformative power of Europe (Grabbe 2006).

 After intensive ENGO campaigns and civil society protests, FSC and the responsible Austrian certification body suspended the FSC certificate of  a major Austrian-owned timber processing company. The company operates in Romania since the early 2000s and has a dominant market position. It has been linked to procuring illegally logged timber from Romanian harvesting companies and thus fuelling illegal logging in the country (EIA 2015). 17  Europeanization is defined as the “emergence and the development at the European level of distinct structures of governance, that is, of political, legal, and social institutions associated with political problem-solving that formalizes interactions among the actors, and of policy networks specializing in the creation of authoritative European rules” (Risse et al. 2001). 16

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

39

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has been used in several EU policy studies in areas such as biodiversity conservation/Natura 2000 (Sotirov et al. 2015), EU Timber Regulation (Sotirov et  al. 2017), and forest policy (dis)integration (Winkel and Sotirov 2016; Sotirov and Storch 2018). Rooted in social psychology (Sabatier 1988; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993, 1999; Sabatier and Weible 2007), the ACF analyzes policy change and stability over time. In short, it theorizes the policy process as an enduring process of value-based conflicts between rivaling coalitions and their strategies surrounding the attainment of rival policy beliefs. Each coalition consists of governmental and non-governmental actors from different levels who share policy core beliefs and coordinate actions over time. Stable coalitions share a common understanding of problems and solutions, interpret evidence and information similarly, trust each other, and distribute costs and benefits equitably (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999; Zafonte and Sabatier 1998, 2004).

3.7  T  he Leading Causes of the Observed Problems in the Forest Sector Scholars agree that the institutional and socioeconomic changes after 1989, and their impacts on livelihoods, incomes, and business operations, are the main roots of illegal timber logging and trade in Romania (Bouriaud and Schmithüsen 2005; Nichiforel 2007; Knorn et al. 2012). Illegal logging has been linked to rural economic hardship, focusing on the emerging private property regime (Bouriaud 2005; Abrudan et al. 2009). Contested forest property rights and related tenure insecurity, forest owners’ lack of knowledge in SFM, insufficient forest watch but also widespread corruption, inadequate enforcement capacity, and foreign investments have all been identified as key drivers of forest overexploitation and illegal timber logging triggering nature degradation and biodiversity loss in the country. Many interviewed actors linked illegal logging to the forest sector’s underfunding and the related poor remuneration of forestry administration and supervisory personnel, resulting in corrupt practices. Some actors believe that political parties deliberately perpetuate this state of underfunding so that they could manipulate state forestry agencies and personnel to preserve their “illegal access to forests.” Besides, nature parks are managed by NFA Romsilva, which is considered to decrease park management autonomy in the fight against illegal logging. Romsilva manages 3.13 million ha of public state forests representing 48% of the total forest area (Romsilva 2020). Its primary duties are implementing the national forest law and strategy and securing the conservation and SFM of state-owned forests. The division of responsibilities and administrative rules between the competent ministry and Romsilva has remained somewhat unclear and overlapping, potentially hampering effective law enforcement and efficient forestry operations in both state and non-state-owned forests (Sotirov 2014).

40

I. Gavrilut et al.

Furthermore, some interviewees highlighted existing deficiencies and loopholes in national legislation. For instance, a key issue lies in the dominant wood selling system based on volume estimations, i.e., as live trees standing in the forest, allowing for inaccuracies and abuse. There are reform calls for timber sale to be based exclusively on exact measurements conducted as timber leaves the forest, given existing technologies able to accurately and automatically estimate volumes, e.g., based on digital images of wood trucks. It has also been pointed out that checks (and video monitoring systems) are most effective on those roads connecting forests with the nearest warehouses, since timber leaving the forest is often not reported in SUMAL but illegally transported to nearby local markets. However, rural communities are dependent on forest resources, e.g., for firewood. Although the Forest Code foresees ensuring firewood supply for the rural population, secondary legislation prevents people from legally accessing firewood at affordable prices (WWF 2020). Since nearly 50% of Romanian households depend on firewood as a primary source of heating (CC 2017), there is currently a firewood crisis that needs to be addressed to sustain rural livelihoods and reduce illegal logging (Feiler 2018). Many interviewed actors also see the foreign timber industry and its domination in Romania’s timber market as a significant cause of illegal logging (Feiler 2018). This is linked to the large timber demand coming from international timber processing companies operating in the country, their inability or unwillingness to thoroughly screen their supply chains against illegal logging, as well as the high degree of fragmentation (rather than consolidation) of the harvesting sector, with over 5000 companies, many of them operating outside the law.

3.8  T  he History of the Involvement of Civil Society in the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas To address corruption and organized crime in CEE countries, the EU instituted the non-acquis cooperation and verification mechanism (CVM) based on a “naming and shaming” model of enforced learning (Sotirov and Winkel 2016) consistent with the second logic of Europeanization (see above). It has been used alongside traditional methods to implement the acquis by the accession conditionality model (Sedelmeier 2014) consistent with the first path of Europeanization (see above). Both mechanisms have proven useful in legitimizing and empowering domestic civil society actors to limit state capture and improve environmental governance post-accession (Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014), as confirmed by our results. In line with the findings of Cugleșan (2019) on waste management, it seems that “pre-­ accession conditionality and post-accession sanctioning mechanisms coupled with

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

41

social learning” have helped Romania achieve moderate success18 at implementing EU policy. Over the past 20  years, environmental activism has gained momentum in Romania. From a weak sector with limited resources and mostly local scope of action in the early 2000s (Parau 2009; Börzel and Buzogány 2010), Romanian ENGOs evolved into a more organized form of advocacy, litigation, and research, increasingly involved and influent in the policy process, in particular on nature conservation and forest policy. This was facilitated by the EU accession and the EC, which strengthened ENGOs’ advocacy and networking capacities and external funding (Börzel and Buzogány 2010; Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014; Scriban et al. 2017). ENGOs in Romania are organized in the “Natura 2000” alliance and have a special focus on nature conservation and illegal timber logging (WWF 2005; Greenpeace Romania 2012, 2015, 2019). Historically, they have played a key role in supporting and monitoring the EU nature conservation acquis implementation, providing major contributions to the Natura 2000 list pre- and post-accession,19 and reporting on illegalities in Natura 2000 sites directly to the EC. A group of ENGOs, including WWF, Greenpeace, and some 70 grassroots organizations, skillfully managed to mobilize civil society and media attention during the previous Forest Code revision (2015). They placed forestry issues in the broader context of good governance and fighting corruption, which influenced the policy process and outcome (Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014). Our empirical results show the existence of three policy advocacy coalitions (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999). An economy-oriented coalition (AC1), including private enterprises, forest owners, and certain researchers, shows an understanding of forests based on timber utilization. In contrast, a social-environmental coalition (AC2), including ENGOs, civil society groups, experts, and researchers, seeks forest protection to preserve biodiversity and its ecological functionality. Both AC1 and AC2 perceive a third, state-centered coalition (AC3) dominating Romanian forest policy as the most significant obstacle for forest policy developments (Feiler 2018). In 2015, AC2 built a strategic alliance with the national federation of forest and grassland owners (members of AC1) to influence the Forest Code revision. They linked the issue of illegal logging to the market monopoly of and political/ state capture by international timber industry investors and put forward their common policy position for better forest governance and fighting illegal logging, which in turn helped to mobilize civil society. This “strange-bedfellow” alliance succeeded to translate their policy preferences into the 2015 Forest Code, actively shaping forest policy and public opinion alike.

 We consider a policy implementation successful when the policy achieves its goals to a large extent. 19  During the designation process of Natura 2000 sites in Romania, the European Commission followed NGOs’ views, and it launched the first infringement procedure on environmental policy against Romania when the government excluded sites proposed by NGOs from the official Natura 2000 list (Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014). 18

42

I. Gavrilut et al.

3.9  Conclusions It seems that despite decades of EU accession preparations and institutional reforms, Romania, like other CEE states, still has difficulties at formulating and implementing coherent policies, managing their trade-offs and effects, and manifests state weakness, i.e., the inability to cope with corruption due to state capture and corruption itself (Karklins 2005; Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014; Sotirov et  al. 2015). However, this may be partially compensated by an active civil society and ENGO sector, supported by responsible economic operators, using opportunity structures at the EU level to leverage a transition toward higher transparency and accountability of public authorities and private business actors. This strategy can be further supported by EU control and enforcement mechanisms. An EU infringement procedure is currently underway against Romania, targeting the missing coherence for a correct EUTR implementation. A formal notice has been issued in the first step where the EC highlighted inconsistencies within the national legislation preventing Romanian authorities from checking large amounts of illegally harvested timber. Furthermore, logging is often authorized without environmental impact assessments on protected habitats, conducted in Natura 2000 sites, and thus in breach with the EU Habitats and Birds Directives (EC 2020a). In the absence of the Romanian authorities’ observed efforts to address EUTR implementation shortcomings, the EC issued a reasoned opinion, which implies immediate actions by the authorities (EC 2020b). The latest Forest Code revision law published in September 2020 can thus be linked to the on-going infringement procedure. Whether the Forest Code amendments will help resolve the EC infringement procedure, that remains to be seen (Parliament of Romania 2020). Our empirical results show that civil society actors were empowered by the normative legitimacy of compliance with EU rules, avoidance of infringement procedures, and addressing pressing domestic issues. This is in line with the explanatory factors of conditionality and capacity building, where national ENGOs are encouraged to access national courts. Simultaneously, centralized enforcement by the Commission takes place (i.e., infringement) (Hofmann 2019). Our findings are also consistent with Andonova and Tuta (2014). They find that Romania and Bulgaria’s transnational environmental networks played a key role in strengthening management and enforcement processes, improving compliance with the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. While the formal implementation of the EUTR and the EU Nature Directives/Natura 2000 network could be regarded as relatively successful, our results show how their practical implementation is jeopardized by the deeper drivers of illegal logging in Romania. This links to studies on the “dead letter” or “symbolic” implementation of EU Nature Directives/Natura 2000 (Falkner and Treib 2008; Sotirov et al. 2015) and the uneven implementation of the EUTR across old and new member states (McDermott and Sotirov 2018). They find that the main compliance hurdles are not linked to a lack of political will or transposition-­ impending conditions. Instead, they are due to poorly performing or land use-­ boosted economies, courts of law lacking enforcement capacity, and other domestic

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

43

factors, such as state capture by business and corruption among state authorities, which is largely confirmed by our results. Thus, our findings confirm the explanatory approach proposed by Berglund et al. (2006) and Mbaye (2001) on administrative efficiency and the argument that inefficient bureaucracies are more prone to private interests (Borghetto et  al. 2006). Likewise, they confirm the explanatory approach of Buzogány (2009), linking the limited success of EU environmental policy in Romania to  variables like the limited importance and staffing of the Ministry of Environment, the  limited enforcement capacity, lack of coordination between various levels of administration and agencies, and command-and-control approaches to transposition. Low salaries and lack of necessary expertise, which all very much apply to the forest sector as well, further exacerbate the situation. Finally, our research confirms findings that further reforms are needed to fully adapt forest policy to private forest ownership, to address (illegal) logging in protected areas and old-growth forests. This would ensure policy coherence and consistency between forestry and nature conservation20 (Irimie 2006; Irimie and Essmann 2009; Angelova et al. 2009; Drăgoi and Toza 2019). Since historical forest management and institutional shifts can affect forests for centuries, it is important to understand past forest legacies (Munteanu et al. 2016) and ensure institutional and policy consistency for the future. Although the Romanian forest sector appears to be affected by “institutional amnesia,” the EU accession is considered to have partly alleviated this problem. As domestic nature conservation legislation is dictated by the EU acquis, such as the EU Nature Directives, and recently more so with the EUTR, forest law should be harmonized and subordinated to it, so that sustainable forest management is bound by policy and laws aiming at conservation and sustainable use of natural resources (Drăgoi and Toza 2019). Acknowledgments This research was partially supported by the COST Action FP1207-­ Orchestrating forest-related policy analysis in Europe (ORCHESTRA) and the FP-7 project on “Future-oriented and integrated management of European forest landscapes” INTEGRAL project (grant agreement No 282887). We are grateful to Liviu Nichiforel, Ramona Scriban, and Laura Bouriaud for their helpful insight and support with the stakeholder interviews. We also thank all the interview and survey participants for sharing their knowledge and experience with us.

 Concerning the major transition processes of the past (e.g., forest restitution) and current global challenges like climate change and globalized timber markets, there is a clear need for a strategic long-term action plan for the forest sector. In 2017, the former Ministry of Water and Forests launched the National Forest Strategy (NFS) for 2018–2027, with the overall objective to “harmonize forest functions with requirements to the present and future of the Romanian society through the sustainable management of national forest resources.” The scope and impact of the strategy remain uncertain. By merely naming them, however, the Ministry showed an increased effort to cope with current and future challenges of the sector. The NFS also suggests developing an effective awareness and public communication system for increased stakeholder participation (Ministry of Water and Forests 2017).

20

44

I. Gavrilut et al.

References Abrudan, I.V., V.  Marinescu, O.  Ionescu, et  al. 2009. Developments in the Romanian Forestry and its Linkages with other Sectors. Notulae Botanicae Horti Agrobotanici Cluj-Napoca 37: 14–21. https://doi.org/10.15835/nbha3723468. Andonova, L.B., and I.A.  Tuta. 2014. Transnational Networks and Paths to EU Environmental Compliance: Evidence from New Member States: Transnational networks and paths to EU environmental compliance. Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 775–793. https://doi. org/10.1111/jcms.12126. Anfodillo, T., M.  Carrer, E.D.  Valle, et  al. 2008. Current State of Forest Resources in the Carpathians. Università Degli Studi Di Padova. Legnaro: Dipartimento Territorio e Sistemi Agro-Forestali. Angelova, E.H., D.L. Irimie, M. Sotirov, and G. Winkel. 2009. Bulgarien und Rumänien in der Europäischen Union  – Forstpolitische Herausforderungen | Bulgaria and Romania in the European Union – Challenges for forest policy. Swiss Forestry Journal 160: 15–22. https://doi. org/10.3188/szf.2009.0015. Berglund, S., I.  Gange, and F. van Waarden. 2006. Mass production of law. Routinization in the transposition of European directives: A sociological- institutionalist account. Journal of European Public Policy 13: 692–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760600808550. Borghetto, E., F. Franchino, and D. Giannetti. 2006. Complying with the transposition deadlines of EU directives: Evidence from Italy. Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche: 7–38. Börzel, T.A. 2003. Shaping and Taking EU Policies: Member State Responses to Europeanization. Belfast: Queens University Belfast. ———. 2005. Mind the gap! European integration between level and scope. Journal of European Public Policy 12: 217–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760500043860. Börzel, T., and A. Buzogány. 2010. Environmental organisations and the Europeanisation of public policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The case of biodiversity governance. Environmental Politics 19: 708–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2010.508302. Börzel, T., and T. Risse. 2003. Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe. In The Politics of Europeanization, ed. Kevin Featherstone and Claudio M.  Radaelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bouriaud, L. 2005. Causes of illegal logging in Central and Eastern Europe. Small-scale Forestry 4: 269–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-­005-­0017-­6. Bouriaud, L., and A.  Niskanen. 2003. Illegal logging in the context of the sound use of wood. Economic Commission for Europe, Timber Committee; Food and Agriculture Organization, European Forestry Commission, Poiana Brasov, Romania. Bouriaud, L., and F.  Schmithüsen. 2005. Allocation of Property Rights on Forests through Ownership Reform and Forest Policies in Central and Eastern European Countries. Swiss Forestry Journal 156: 297–305. https://doi.org/10.3188/szf.2005.0297. Bouriaud, L., L. Nichiforel, G. Weiss, et al. 2013. Governance of private forests in Eastern and Central Europe: An analysis of forest harvesting and management rights. Annals of Forest Research 56 (1): 199–215. Buzogány, A. 2009. Romania: Environmental Governance — Form without Substance. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 169–191. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. CC. 2017. The Competition Council makes some recommendations to strengthen competition on the primary timber market. Romanian Competition Council. Cugleșan, N. 2019. Post accession compliance with EU environmental legislation in Romania and Bulgaria in the first ten years of EU membership. Conditionality and social learning, as drivers of success? Denver, Colorado. Declic. 2017. 250,000 Europeans demand FSC withdrawal of Schweighofer certification. In: Declic. https://www.declic.ro/250-­000-­de-­europeni-­cer-­fsc-­retragerea-­certificarii-­ schweighofer/. Accessed 3 Oct 2020.

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

45

Della Porta, D., and M.  Caiani. 2009. Social Movements and Europeanization. Oxford University Press. Dimitrova, A., and A. Buzogány. 2014. Post-Accession Policy-Making in Bulgaria and Romania: Can Non-state Actors Use EU Rules to Promote Better Governance?: Post-accession policy-­ making in Bulgaria and Romania. Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 139–156. https://doi. org/10.1111/jcms.12084. Drăgoi, M., and V. Toza. 2019. Did Forestland Restitution Facilitate Institutional Amnesia? Some Evidence from Romanian Forest Policy. Land 8: 99. https://doi.org/10.3390/land8060099. EC. 2019. The EU Environmental Implementation Review 2019 Country Report  – ROMANIA. European Commission. ———. 2020a. European Commission: Letters of formal notice Forests: Commission urges ROMANIA to stop illegal logging. In: February infringements package: key decisions. https:// ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/INF_20_202. ———. 2020b. European Commission: July infringements package: Key decisions. Nature: The Commission is calling on ROMANIA to combat illegal logging and better protect forests in its Natura 2000 sites. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/bg/inf_20_1212. ECA. 2017. Special Report. More efforts needed to implement the Natura 2000 network to its full potential. European Court of Auditors. EIA. 2015. Stealing the last forest: Austria’s largest timber company, land rights and corruption in Romania. Environmental Investigation Agency. ———. 2016. Built on lies: New homes in Japan destroy old forests in Europe. Environmental Investigation Agency. EU. 2010. Regulation (EU) No 995/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 laying down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market. ———. 2018. Regulation (EU) 2018/841 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 on the inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land use, land use change and forestry in the 2030 climate and energy framework, and amending Regulation (EU) No 525/2013 and Decision No 529/2013/EU. Evans, D., A. Demeter, P. Gajdoš, and Ľ. Halada. 2013. Adapting environmental conservation legislation for an enlarged European Union: Experience from the Habitats Directive. Environmental Conservation 40: 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892912000422. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. FAO. 2014. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. Country Report Romania. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Feiler, L. 2018. Understanding Forest Policy Change and Stability – Advocacy coalitions in the Romanian forest sector. Master-thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Forest Sciences. Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources. Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy. Gavrilut, I., A.-F.  Halalisan, A.  Giurca, and M.  Sotirov. 2015. The Interaction between FSC Certification and the Implementation of the EU Timber Regulation in Romania. Forests 7: 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/f7010003. Grabbe, H. 2006. Europeanisation, Negotiations and Influence. In The EU’s Transformative Power. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Greenpeace Romania. 2012. Illegal logging cases in Romanian forests – 2012. ———. 2015. Illegal logging cases in Romanian forests 2015. ———. 2019. Illegal Logging in Romania. Report 2018. ———. 2020 Newsletter: The amendment of the Forest Code is being discussed in Parliament. Griffiths, P., T.  Kuemmerle, R.E.  Kennedy, et  al. 2012. Using annual time-series of Landsat images to assess the effects of forest restitution in post-socialist Romania. Remote Sensing of Environment 118: 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2011.11.006.

46

I. Gavrilut et al.

Halalisan, A., I.  Abrudan, and B.  Popa. 2018. Forest Management Certification in Romania: Motivations and Perceptions. Forests 9: 425. https://doi.org/10.3390/f9070425. Hofmann, A. 2019. Left to interest groups? On the prospects for enforcing environmental law in the European Union. Environmental Politics 28: 342–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401 6.2019.1549778. Ioras, F., I.V. Abrudan, M. Dautbasic, et al. 2009. Conservation gains through HCVF assessments in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania. Biodiversity and Conservation 18: 3395–3406. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10531-­009-­9649-­8. Irimie, D.L. 2006 Property Rights in Romanian Forest Policy – An institutional analysis in the context of societal transformation. PhD Thesis, Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg. Irimie, D.L., and H.F.  Essmann. 2009. Forest property rights in the frame of public policies and societal change. Forest Policy and Economics 11: 95–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. forpol.2008.10.001. Kärkkäinen, A. 2008. EU-15 Foreign Direct Investment in the new Member States. Karklins, R. 2005. The System Made Me Do It: Corruption in Post-Communist Societies. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe. Cambridge University Press. Knorn, J., T. Kuemmerle, V.C. Radeloff, et al. 2012. Forest restitution and protected area effectiveness in post-socialist Romania. Biological Conservation 146: 204–212. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.biocon.2011.12.020. ———. 2013. Continued loss of temperate old-growth forests in the Romanian Carpathians despite an increasing protected area network. Environmental Conservation 40: 182–193. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0376892912000355. Kuemmerle, T., D.  Müller, P.  Griffiths, and M.  Rusu. 2009. Land use change in Southern Romania after the collapse of socialism. Regional Environmental Change 9: 1–12. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10113-­008-­0050-­z. Marinchescu, M., A.F.  Halalisan, B.  Popa, and I.V.  Abrudan. 2014. Forest Administration in Romania: Frequent Problems and Expectations. Notulae Botanicae Horti Agrobotanici Cluj-­ Napoca 42: 588–595. https://doi.org/10.15835/nbha4229738. Marks, G., and D.  McAdam. 1996. Social Movements and the Changing Structure of Political Opportunity in the European Union. In Governance in the European Union, ed. Gary Marks, Fritz W.  Scharpf, Philippe C.  Schmitter, and Wolfgang Streeck, 95–120. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage. Mbaye, H.A. 2001. Why national states comply with supranational law: Explaining implementation infringements in the European Union, 1972–1993. European Union Politics 2: 259–281. McDermott, C.L., and M.  Sotirov. 2018. A political economy of the European Union’s timber regulation: Which member states would, should or could support and implement EU rules on the import of illegal wood? Forest Policy and Economics 90: 180–190. Mihai, B., I.  Săvulescu, M.  Rujoiu-Mare, and C.  Nistor. 2017. Recent forest cover changes (2002–2015) in the Southern Carpathians: A case study of the Iezer Mountains, Romania. Science of the Total Environment 599–600: 2166–2174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. scitotenv.2017.04.226. Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration. 2016. Romanian Government. The Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration. Legislative Portal. http://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/158885. Accessed 10 Mar 2020. Ministry of Water and Forests. 2017 Strategia Forestiera Nationala 2018–2027. Munteanu, C., M.D. Nita, I.V. Abrudan, and V.C. Radeloff. 2016. Historical forest management in Romania is imposing strong legacies on contemporary forests and their management. Forest Ecology and Management 361: 179–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2015.11.023. National Agency for Protected Areas. 2020. ANANP Legislation. http://ananp.gov.ro/legislatie/. Accessed 10 Mar 2020. Nichiforel, G. 2005. Stadiul aplicării legilor retrocedării privitoare la păduri. Bucovina forestiera 15: 21–43. ———. 2007. Current status in forest restitution. Bucovina forestiera: 21–43.

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

47

Nichiforel, R., and L.  Nichiforel. 2011. Perception of relevant stakeholders on the potential of the implementation of the “Due Diligence” system in combating illegal logging in Romania. Journal of Horticulture, Forestry and Biotechnology 15: 126–133. Nichiforel, L., L. Bouriaud, M. Dragoi, et al. 2015. Forest land ownership change in Romania. European Forest Institute. Parau, C.E. 2009. Impaling Dracula: How EU Accession Empowered Civil Society in Romania. West European Politics 32: 119–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402380802509917. Parliament of Romania. 2015. Law 133/2015 for amending and completing the Law no. 46/2008 – Forest Code, Article 60. ———. 2020. Law 197 of September 7, 2020 for the amendment and completion of Law no. 46/2008: Forest Code. Pokorny, B., M. Sotirov, D. Kleinschmit, and P. Kanowski. 2019. Forests as Global Commons: International governance and the role of Germany, Report to the Science Platform Sustainability 2030. University of Freiburg. Risse, T., M.G.  Cowles, and J.A.  Caporaso. 2001. Europeanization and Domestic Change: Introduction. In Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Romanian Court of Accounts. 2013. Summary of the Audit Report on “The patrimonial situation of the forestry fund in Romania, between 1990 and 2012”. Bucharest: Romanian Court of Accounts. Romsilva. 2020. National Forestry Program of the National Forest Administration – Romsilva for 2020. http://www.rosilva.ro/noutati/program_national_de_impaduriri_al_regiei_nationale_a_ padurilor_-­_romsilva_pe_anul_2020__p_451.htm. Accessed 10 Apr 2020. Sabatier, P.A. 1988. An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-­ oriented learning therein. Policy Sciences 21: 129–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136406. Sabatier, P.A., and H.  Jenkins-Smith. 1993. The Advocacy Coalition Framework: assessment, revisions, and implications for scholars and practitioners. In Policy Change and Learning. An Advocacy Coalition Approach, ed. P.A.  Sabatier and H.  Jenkins-Smith, 211–235. Boulder: Westview Press. ———. 1999. The Advocacy Coalition Framework. An Assessment. In Theories of the policy process, Theoretical lenses on public policy, ed. Paul A.  Sabatier, 117–166. Boulder: Westview Press. Sabatier, P.A., and C.M.  Weible. 2007. The advocacy coalition framework: Innovations and clarifications. In Theories of the policy process, ed. Paul A.  Sabatier, 189–220. Boulder: Westview Press. Scriban, R.E., L. Nichiforel, L.G. Bouriaud, et al. 2017. Governance of the forest restitution process in Romania. An application of the DPSIR model. Forest Policy and Economics 99: 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.10.018. ———. 2019. Governance of the forest restitution process in Romania: An application of the DPSIR model. Forest Policy and Economics 99: 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.10.018. Sedelmeier, U. 2014. Anchoring Democracy from Above? The European Union and Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Romania after Accession: Anchoring democracy from above? Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12082. Sotirov, M. 2014 Sustainable Management of Biodiversity. Final report. South Caucasus. A Policy and Institutional Analysis of Forest Sector Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. On behalf of GIZ. ———. 2017. Natura 2000 and forests: Assessing the state of implementation and effectiveness. What science can tell us. European Forest Institute. Sotirov, M., and S. Storch. 2018. Resilience through policy integration in Europe? Domestic forest policy changes as response to absorb pressure to integrate biodiversity conservation, bioenergy use and climate protection in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Land Use Policy 79: 977–989.

48

I. Gavrilut et al.

Sotirov, M., and G.  Winkel. 2016. Toward a cognitive theory of shifting coalitions and policy change: Linking the advocacy coalition framework and cultural theory. Policy Sciences 49: 125–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-­015-­9235-­8. Sotirov, M., M.  Lovric, and G.  Winkel. 2015. Symbolic transformation of environmental governance: Implementation of EU biodiversity policy in Bulgaria and Croatia between Europeanization and domestic politics. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 33: 986–1004. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X15605925. Sotirov, M., M.  Stelter, and G.  Winkel. 2017. The emergence of the European Union Timber Regulation: How Baptists, Bootleggers, devil shifting and moral legitimacy drive change in the environmental governance of global timber trade. Forest Policy and Economics 81: 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.05.001. Strimbu, B.M., G.M.  Hickey, and V.G.  Strimbu. 2005. Forest conditions and management under rapid legislation change in Romania. The Forestry Chronicle 81: 350–358. https://doi. org/10.5558/tfc81350-­3. Taconni, L. 2007. Illegal logging: Law enforcement, livelihoods and the timber trade. London: Earthscan. UN. 2016. Sustainable Development Goal 15. In: United Nations. https://sustainabledevelopment. un.org/sdg15. UNEP. 2007. Carpathians environment outlook. Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme. UNFCCC. 2015. Paris Agreement. ———. 2020. Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). https://unfccc.int/topics/ land-­use/workstreams/land-­use%2D%2Dland-­use-­change-­and-­forestry-­lulucf. Accessed 20 Feb 2020. Veen, P., J.  Fanta, I.  Raev, et  al. 2010. Virgin forests in Romania and Bulgaria: Results of two national inventory projects and their implications for protection. Biodiversity and Conservation 19: 1805–1819. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-­010-­9804-­2. Winkel, G., and M. Sotirov. 2016. Whose integration is this? European forest policy between the gospel of coordination, institutional competition, and a new spirit of integration. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 34: 496–514. WWF. 2005. Illegal logging in Romania – a WWF analysis. WWF European Forest Programme and the Danube Carpathian Programme. ———. 2015. Thousands in Romania protest illegal logging. ———. 2019. WWF Calls for a Public Debate on the Results of the Romanian National Forest Inventory. https://www.wwfadria.org/?uNewsID=357022 ———. 2020. The crisis of firewood for the population. https://www.wwf.ro/ce_facem/paduri/ combaterea_taierilor_ilegale/criza_lemnului_de_foc_pentru_populaie/. Zafonte, M., and P.A.  Sabatier. 1998. Shared Beliefs and Imposed Interdependencies as Determinants of Ally Networks in Overlapping Subsystems. Journal of Theoretical Politics 10 (4): 473–505. Zafonte, M., and P. Sabatier. 2004. Short-Term Versus Long-Term Coalitions in the Policy Process: Automotive Pollution Control, 1963–1989. Policy Studies Journal 32: 75–107. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0190-­292X.2004.00054.x. Ines Gavrilut holds an M.Sc. in environmental governance from the University of Freiburg, Germany. She currently works at the chair of Remote Sensing and Landscape Information Systems of the same university. She has professional experience in international project management in EU energy and environmental policy, sustainability management, and sustainable investment at EU level. Her main research focus is on the implementation of EU environmental policy (forestry, energy) and the use of scientific and technical information in the policy process. She currently coordinates an EU Interreg project focusing on the implementation of a resilient, renewables-based energy system in the Upper Rhine region.  

3  Synthetic Assessment of the Governance of Forests and Protected Areas, Related…

49

Lukas Feiler holds an M.Sc. in forest sciences from the University of Freiburg, Germany. He currently works for the Earthworm Foundation, a Swiss Non-for-­profit organization working with industry actors to sustainably transform international supply chains. He has professional experience in sustainable resource management, forest management, supply chain traceability, sustainable procurement, forest certification, and international forest policy.  

Metodi Sotirov is senior researcher and assistant/associate professor of forest and environmental policy at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Germany. He worked as faculty associate with the Governance, Environment and Markets Initiative, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, USA. Dr. Sotirov has an extensive experience in scientific research, policy consultancy, and project management. He has served as consultant and expert to European forest sustainability reports for FOREST EUROPE/FAO/UNECE, delivered expert inputs and policy advice to the EU Standing Forestry Committee, DG Environment and DG Agriculture of the European Commission, and attended EU-level expert groups on EUTR/FLEGT, Natura 2000 and forests, and forest protection and monitoring in Europe.  

Chapter 4

Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania: Where We Stand, What the Data Reveals, What Should Be Done in the Future? Gabriela Iorga

Abstract  Limiting air pollution is a challenging task on a global scale as various simulations showing the air quality is projected to degrade by the mid-twenty-first century. Reducing pollution is highly dependent on the resources allocated to monitor pollutants as a key to identify the primary sources of pollution and requires adequate environmental public policies to tackle these sources. The present chapter reviews the evolution of the EU acquis and other relevant international conventions. Then I present the development of Romania’s transposition and implementation of the EU acquis and the efforts to construct an adequate monitoring capacity and how this is reflected in emissions and measured atmospheric major pollutants’ level. The decreasing trend of primary gaseous pollutants in EU-28 and Romania is shown, but measured atmospheric concentrations highlight that pollution due to particulate matter and nitrogen oxides still represents a severe problem, with systematic exceedances and particular high peaks during pollution episodes. This chapter ends with a review of the EC’s infringement procedures against Romania and a discussion on possible factors that led to Romania’s failure to fulfill its obligations under Directive 2008/50/EC in the air quality field.

4.1  Introduction There is nowadays convincing evidence that air quality impairment due to air pollution is a global issue (Harrison 2007; IPCC 2014; Seinfeld and Pandis 2016). The world could not ignore the burning of the Amazonian rainforest in July–September 2018 and 2019 (BBC News 2019). The entire Europe could not ignore the G. Iorga (*) Faculty of Chemistry, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Bucharest-Magurele, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_4

51

52

G. Iorga

Eyjafjallajökull Volcano eruption with pulsating explosive activity in Iceland in April–May 2010. It caused enormous disruption to air travel in most parts of Europe because of the airspace closure (Gudmundsson et  al. 2012). Air pollution is also responsible for serious health effects on peoples (Pope and Dockery 2006). According to the World Health Organization, about seven million people die every year from stroke, lung cancer, and heart diseases caused or amplified by air pollution (WHO 2018). Moreover, air pollution is closely linked to climate change because many of the underlying drivers are common, and the relationship is bi-univocal: air pollutants as black carbon, methane, and nitrogen dioxide are drivers of climate change. Efforts to reduce air pollution will help mitigate climate change. Conversely, lower temperatures will determine less tropospheric ozone formation. The pattern of nitrogen oxides will be affected, SO2 conversion to sulfates will change, the small particulate composition will modify, and fewer precipitations will transport to the ground, fewer acidic species as nitrates and sulfates. Therefore, air pollution is a global issue with global, regional, and local effects, with noticeable and quantifiable effects and impacts at short and long timescales. We should therefore think to approach it with global, regional, and specific local actions: many, complex and concerted, focused on a common goal to improve the air quality, to reduce the pollution effects on the environment, climate, and human being lives. As pollution prevention measures are implemented at the national level, this chapter analyzes how Romania has come to still face infringement procedures after about 13 years after its EU ascension. In this chapter, I map the historical development of the EU’s approach to regulate air pollution, the evolution of transposition and implementation in Romania of EU decisions and directives. In parallel, I analyze the evolution of emissions and atmospheric concentrations of major air pollutants to understand the main factors preventing this environmental issue’s successful tackling. It results that Romania’s limited progress in tackling air pollution is due to a combination of factors: the topic is a significantly complex one from a scientific point of view, requesting interdisciplinary approaches; technical deficiencies, lack of investments in up-to-date logistics and funding for maintenance and operating costs of monitoring devices; possible low administrative efficiency and poor coordination with frequent shortcomings of communications between various levels of administration and agencies, and between Romanian responsible factors and the EU institutions. The lack of environmental education and veto player’s institutional decision-making constraints also contribute to the environmental policy’s limited success. As the differences between the aims of Directive 2008/50/EC and the status quo in Romania are significant, the limited “goodness-of-fit” also explains the little progress. This chapter is structured as follows: first, a section is dedicated to a short general view of the main pollutants and their sources and impacts. Section 4.3 reviews the evolution of the EU acquis and other relevant international conventions and their implementation in the field. Section 4.4 is focused on Romania’s capacity to monitor air pollutants. In Sects. 4.5 and 4.6, I present the most important data regarding

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

53

the evolution of emissions and atmospheric pollution in the EU and Romania. Section 4.7 reviews Romania’s implementation of EU acquis and how this is reflected in emissions and measured atmospheric major pollutants’ levels. This chapter ends with a review of EC’s infringement procedures against Romania and a discussion on possible factors that led to Romania’s failure to fulfill its obligations under Directive 2008/50/EC as a result of a review of environmental policy literature.

4.2  What Pollution Is? To understand air pollution monitoring problems, we must first briefly revisit what pollutants are, how they circulate throughout the atmosphere, and how they influence the environment. According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is “the contamination of the indoor or outdoor environment by any chemical, physical, or biological agent that modifies the atmosphere’s natural characteristics.” The pollutants are substances that accumulate in the atmosphere in such a concentration and for enough long time that they may harm the living organisms or produce damage to building materials (Jacobson 2002). In this respect, the amount of pollutants existent in a time interval over an area, the rate at which pollutants are released into the atmosphere from various sources, and how quickly they disperse or deposit onto surfaces determine the status of air pollution over a specific region (Yoo et al. 2014). Many times this status is expressed using the air quality (AQ) collocation. Air pollution has high values when the air quality is poor, whereas, for an excellent AQ, the atmosphere very much approximates its natural composition. The two main categories distinguish among pollutants: those in a gaseous state and those in solid and/or liquid state. The gaseous pollutants of primary concern include those that are directly injected into the atmosphere such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). Still, there are others: ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), fluorine compounds, organic vapors, etc. Another gaseous pollutant is tropospheric ozone O3 that forms in the atmosphere through complex chemical reactions between NO2 and various volatile organic compounds in solar radiation (Nathanson 2020). Air pollutants undergo multiple chemical and physical transformations. Some of them might act as climate forcers, like CO2 (also directly emitted in various fossil fuel combustion processes), N2O, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), and CH4, known as greenhouse gases. Particulate matter (PM) represents a mixture of particles (solid and liquid) with longer or shorter residence time in the atmosphere. It covers a wide range of sizes, complex chemical compositions, hygroscopic properties, densities, and shapes that vary in time and space as a function of PM sources and formation mechanisms (e.g., Seinfeld and Pandis 2016). The particles’ size ranges over more than four orders of magnitude from a few nm to around 100 μm. PM10 (PM2.5 or PM1) refers to mass concentrations of all particles in the air with a diameter of less than 10 (2.5 or 1) μm, while TSP refers to total suspended particles.

54

G. Iorga

As proven by the European aerosol climatology studies (Putaud et al. 2004), PM chemical composition’s large spatial and temporal variability poses additional pressure on the environment. Acidic species can damage ecosystems if deposed on the ground. They can perturb the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients by acidifying/eutrophicating lakes and rivers (IPCC 2014). Moreover, PM and black carbon, a fraction of PM, particularly soil or irreversibly damage the monuments, affect cultural heritage. Figure 4.1 synthesizes some of the linkages between pollution sources, atmospheric concentrations, and their environmental impacts. Progress achieved in understanding the air pollution issues worldwide during the past decades is due to numerous detailed investigations, the application of many techniques, and the acquisition of abundant monitoring capacities. Air pollution/air quality measures are performed by networks of air quality monitoring stations owned by national governments and national agencies under the government’s direct supervision. Regional administrations or some nonprofit organizations might collaborate. Universities or research institutes might also perform their measurements on various timescales for specific research topics. Because the environmental public policies aim to reduce pollutants in the atmosphere, they must consider the whole chain of aspects related to air pollution, including the fact that the monitoring depends on the capacity to collect adequate data.

4.3  T  he History and Evolution of the EU acquis and Implementation Instruments The EU has started to tackle air pollution in the 1970s, and the efforts lead to tangible success. Figure 4.2 shows the historical European and international air quality legislation framework and other relevant international conventions in the field.

Fig. 4.1  Diagram showing connections between pollution sources, most widespread air pollutants, air quality, and impacts. (Adapted from Iorga 2016)

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

55

Fig. 4.2  Diagram showing historical EU (in blue) and international (in green) air quality regulations; EC reports on implementation on NEC Directive 2016/2284/EU (European Parliament and the Council) also in green; UNECE/CLTRAP/TF HTAP (LRTAP) covers Europe, the USA, Canada, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Ukraine, and Central and East Asian states. (Adapted from Crippa et al. 2016 and updated)

The EU has developed a comprehensive body of air quality legislation. Its approach focuses on three different legal mechanisms to reduce air pollution: setting national limits on total pollutant emissions, defining air quality standards for ambient concentrations of air pollutants, and designing source-specific legislation. Air quality European standards (European Commission Standards) included in Directives in Fig. 4.2 establish the limit values of pollutants (SO2, NO2, CO, O3, PAH, C6H6, Pb, Cd, Ni, PM10, PM2.5) not to be exceeded at various time resolutions: 1 hour, 24 hours, maximum daily 8 hours mean and 1 year, the date when they have to be met in each EU member state, and the number of exceedances for each pollutant per year. Note that these AQ limit values are valid only in the European Union. Like the USA, China, India, New Zealand, Mexico, other countries have their standards. Following the first EU Clean Air Forum in Paris in 2017, the European Commission organized a second EU Clean Air Forum on Nov. 28–29, 2019 (European Commission). Among the topics were household heating versus air quality and agriculture versus air quality. The complete list of directives is found in the reference list. Concerning industrial emissions, the following key pieces of legislation have been identified for the industrial emissions and significant accident hazard policy area: NEC Directive 2001/81/EC for NOx, NMVOcs, SO2, NH3, and fine PM2.5 (European Parliament and of the Council 2001a); IPPC Directive 2008/1/EC (European Parliament and of the Council 2008); IED Directive 2010/75/EU (European Parliament and of the Council 2010); LCP Directive 2001/80/EC (European Parliament and of the Council 2001b) on the limitation of emissions for

56

G. Iorga

SO2, NOx, and dust into the air from large combustion plants, with the end of validity in December 2015 and covered by Directive 2001/81/EC; and IED Directive 2010/75/EU (European Parliament and of the Council 2010) on industrial emissions, which replaced LCP Directive 2001/80/EC (European Parliament and of the Council 2001b) that comes with more restrictive measures, by constraining emissions locally, at the point where these leave the installation. However, there may be some exceptional cases where derogation is granted. It is also the case of Romania, where 28 plants operate under limited lifetime derogation (no permit is necessary at the moment) until 2023 (IED Article 33 – final list of plants operating under limited lifetime derogations) (CIRCABC). Other important regulations are MCP Directive 2015/2193/EU (European Parliament and of the Council 2015) on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from Medium Combustion Plants; Mercury Regulation 2017/852 (European Parliament and of the Council 2017) on use, storage, and trade of mercury and management of mercury waste; and Seveso III Directive 2012/18/EU (European Parliament and of the Council 2012) on the control of major accident hazards involving dangerous substances. Implementing EU acquis is essential for health and the environment and provides economic benefits (European Commission 2019a). Overall, successful implementation of pollution and public policies can be defined in terms of transposing and implementing the EU acquis and reducing emissions and compliance with the established atmospheric limit values in the short and long term. Nevertheless, given that pollution in an area is caused, enhanced, or diminished by a broad array of factors (various sources, such as industrial facilities; transportations by air, land, or water; construction activities; natural resources extraction; agricultural activities; waste processing; meteorological and climate influences; geographical characteristics; urbanization and demographic factors; long-range pollutant transport; etc.), limiting emissions and maintaining low atmospheric pollution levels are some of the most complex problems to deal with. At least strong motivation and a concerted and long-term collaboration between decision-makers for any mitigation actions are crucial to fulfilling this aim. To improve its capacity to monitor the implementation of environmental policies, the European Commission has developed the Environmental Implementation Review (European Commission 2019b) to improve the implementation of EU environmental law and policy and address the causes of implementation gaps and try to find solutions before problems become urgent. There is a 2-yearly cycle of analysis, dialogue, and collaboration, with the publication of country reports and discussions between the European Commission, EU member states, and stakeholders. Country reports are drafted every 2 years, focusing on essential topics in environmental policy and law in each EU member state. They are published along with a summary that sets out common trends, recommendations, and political conclusions. The European Commission published on April 5, 2019, the second Environment Implementation Review (European Commission 2019a), an overview of how EU environmental policies and laws are applied on the ground. It is very clearly mentioned that: “Full implementation of EU environmental legislation could save the EU economy around €55 billion every year in health costs and direct costs to the

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

57

environment.” EIR in 2019 also mentions: “the implementation gap cost estimate in the study is connected with much uncertainty, one could say that the highest costs are on air quality, then nature, followed by water, waste, and industrial emissions.” Costs of not implementing EU environmental law for air quality (i.e, specific limits for air pollution concentration values and overall national emission ceilings) (European Commission 2019c) at the EU level are estimated at 24.6 bn euro per year (range estimate 8.7–40.4), estimations at 2018 cost level. Therefore, EU environmental law’s effectiveness depends on its implementation at member state, regional, and local levels. The efforts undertaken in the last half of the century made it feasible for the EU to commit to undertaking ambitious climate action, having ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on October 5, 2016. The EU targets reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% by 2020 and by at least 40% by 2030, compared to 1990. The EU aims to cut emissions by 80–95% by 2050, as part of the efforts required by developed countries as a group.

4.4  Developing Romania’s Capacity to Monitor Air Pollution Information about air quality monitoring in Romania before the falling of the iron curtain in 1989 is hardly accessible. As mentioned in Romanian National Environmental Health Action Plan in 1997 (MH and MWFEP 1997): “in Romania, the air quality surveillance began in 1973, by a control network belonging to the Ministry of Health. In 1989, this network included 86 monitoring points, using the aspiration technique in 55 localities and 499 points using the sedimentation method in 90 localities. The monitoring areas covered approximately 30% of the Romanian population (7.1 million inhabitants). The main studied pollutants were suspended particles, SO2, NO2, and heavy metals.” However, it is known that before 1990, very high levels of pollution were in areas around the industrial facilities.1 During the communist period, production was more important than energy consumption. The price of the natural resources was low, and paying for pollution received no attention. People were aware of the pollution, but they accepted the higher wages and sooner retirement schemes they will receive working in such polluting facilities. In ex-socialist countries in Eastern Europe, the general international perception was that the pollution level was much higher at similar industrialization and income levels than in Western Europe, not being clear why (Hill 1992).

1  For example, at Copsa Mica, Zlatna, Baia Mare, Tulcea, and Slatina (nonferrous metallurgy); Resita and Galati (steel industry); Ploiesti, Brasov, Onesti-Borzesti, and Midia-Navodari (chemical and petrochemical industry); Bacau (chemical industry); Bacau and Suceava (cellulose and paper industry); Govora, Turnu-Magurele, and Tirgu-Mures (chemical industry); Turceni, Rovinari, Craiova, Iasi, and Bucharest (thermo-electrical power plants); and Jiu basin (coal mining industry).

58

G. Iorga

In the 1990s, after the communist regime fell apart, many heavy industry facilities, chemicals, mining, smelting, etc. in the past have been closed and never reopened; energy consumption in the industry and Romania decreased dramatically. Therefore, emissions of SOx, and NOx, whi ch are pollutants both directly emitted, and precursors of PM10 decreased significantly (Fig. 4.3). For the period 1989–1999, the air pollution monitoring, following Romanian-specific protocols, appears to be best documented in the United Nation’s publication on the Environmental Performance Review of Romania (United Nations 2001). During 1991–1992, the Institute of Public Health Bucharest assessed the Romanian population’s health status concerning the environmental factors. The target population was mainly from the above areas, characterized by intense air pollution. Two approaches were used: based on the existing data in the routine health status information system and based on epidemiological studies focusing on those regions (MH and MWFEP 1997), both subject to large uncertainties. Monitoring of air quality between the 1990s and 2000s across the country shows nonsystematic manual sampling and insufficiently explained measurement methods concerning accuracy. Even so, most studies showed frequent exceedances of the maximum admitted concentrations at those times (generally varying between 500 and 100 μg m−3) of the measured data (Houthuijs et al. 2001; Baldasano et al. 2003; Iorga et al. 2015; Iorga 2016). EU regulations regarding pollution monitoring started to be transposed into local legislation following Order 592/25.06.2002 (MAPM 2002). In 2004, eight fixed sampling points appeared in Bucharest, which turned into the present automatic AQ

Fig. 4.3 (a) Comparison between PM10, PM2.5 (left, upper panel), and NOx (as NO2) and SOx (as SO2) emissions (right, upper panel) in Romania and the EU-28 mean between 1990 and 2018. (b) Energy production by sectors and fossil fuel CO2 emissions resulting from the NIS database (lower panel)

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

59

Network of Bucharest. Since 2004, the monitoring network has been gradually extended in the rest of the country. Therefore, the year 2004 marked the beginning of Romania’s air pollutants’ systematic monitoring, a prerequisite for air quality assessment with high accuracy. The longest valid time series for principal pollutants in our country are public data, accessible at www.calitateaer.ro. The same data can be found in the European air quality database,2 maintained by the European Environment Agency. EEA’s air quality database consists of a multi-annual time series of air quality measurement data and calculated statistics for many air pollutants. It also contains meta-information on the monitoring networks involved, their stations and measurements, air quality zones, assessment regimes, and compliance attainments reported by the EU member states and European Economic Area countries, including Romania. Nowadays, the National Agency of Environmental Protection manages 143 monitoring stations of all types: traffic, industrial, urban background, rural, and remote background operating at the Romania scale. The National Air Quality Monitoring Network will be expanded in the immediate future (most probably in 2020) with 60 new stations. “It is the largest investment in air quality monitoring in the last ten years since the National Air Quality Monitoring Network was put into operation,” declares the Minister in the press release on July 7, 2020 (MMAP 2020). Also, the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Forests will develop and manage a network of 50 air quality sensors. Information on air quality in Romania can be obtained in the traditional way (ground-based samplers and analyzers used at AQ monitoring network) and in situ remote techniques like satellite or sun-photometers LIDAR or DOAS systems. However, these methods are not standardized, and the observations they provide must be validated against in situ ground-based observations. Moreover, matching the data from AQ monitoring with remote observations is an open scientific challenge (Voinea et al. 2018). Based on data collected by the AQ National Monitoring Network, combined with the specific field campaigns focused directly or indirectly on Romania’s air pollution, an increasing number of scientific papers in the mainstream of scientific journals were published in the past 10 years. By far, the pollution in urban areas seems to be the most studied at the Romania scale. I briefly mention here only some, grouped by location in the country: Bucharest (Iorga et al. 2015; Bodor et al. 2020), Iasi (Sfîcă et al. 2018), Brasov (Năstase et al. 2018), Miercurea Ciuc (Szep et al. 2017), Cluj-Napoca (Soporan et  al. 2015), Timisoara (Popescu et  al. 2011), and Craiova (Velea et al. 2020). Some other studies cover the entire country or more than one urban area (e.g., Haiduc and Beldean-Galea 2011; Iorga 2016; Ştefănuţ et al. 2018, 2019; Velea et al. 2020). Sometimes, monitored data at Poiana Stampei, a remote background station within the European Monitoring Programme (EMEP) and used as a reference station, are included in researches (Iorga 2016). Therefore, the lowest levels of pollutants at a specific time in Romania are available, too.

 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/explore-interactive-maps/up-to-date-air-quality-data

2

60

G. Iorga

As pollutant time series became more available, so does the complexity of the research papers, e.g., references (Sfîcă et al. 2018; Szép et al. 2019). Iorga et al. (2015) reported first analyses of major pollutant PM10, PM2.5, CO, SO2, and NO2 datasets covering a long period (2005–2010) for the Bucharest metropolitan area. It provided an overview of the general air pollution and the identification of factors that influence pollution levels. Iorga et al. (2015) also presented for the first time an extensive analysis of air pollution episodes based on 2005 monitored data, showing these episodes are mainly due to local sources and, to a lesser extent, to long-range transport of pollutants. The study by Manolache et al. (2019) revealed the Bucharest area’s low capacity to disperse the pollutants in conditions of atmospheric stability and large emissions from traffic, plenty of construction sites, industry, agriculture, and biomass burning in the peri-urban area. However, air pollutant dispersion is site-specific and depends on emissions, climate, and regional geographical characteristics, as it was also proven in studies regarding the Miercurea Ciuc basin (Szep et al. 2017).

4.5  Analysis of the Evolution of Emitted Pollutant Levels Analyzing the emission trends is the first step in understanding the evolution of measured atmospheric concentrations of primary pollutants. Based on the WebDab3 data (officially reported data corrected and/or gap-filled by experts as total national activity sectors for Romania and the calculated mean of the EU-28), Fig. 4.3a presents the emissions for PM10, PM2.5, NOx, and SOx pollutants (main pollutants related to industry and traffic) between 1990 and 2018, and Fig. 4.3b shows the CO2 emissions and the energy production as results from Romanian National Institute of Statistics (NIS) database, available at http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-­online/. While gaseous NOx and SOx in Romania follows, in general, the decreasing trend of the EU-28 mean, both PM fractions have an opposite tendency: net increase. Calculating the detected monotonic trends following the procedure developed in Iorga et al. (2015), we observe that CO decreased in Romania about four times less than the EU-mean and NOx about two times than the EU mean. Instead, SOx had a sharper decrease than the EU-mean by about 1.5 times. These behaviors could be explained by a superposition of factors, including the start (2004–2005–onward) of changing the old passenger cars with new cars (including diesel-based) within the National Program “Rabla,” followed by changing the old agricultural machinery

3  WebDab contains all emission data officially submitted to the secretariat of the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP Convention) by Parties to the Convention. WebDab is the emission database of cooperative program for monitoring and evaluation of longrange transmission of air pollutants in Europe (EMEP), open to public for interactive use via Internet at https://www.ceip.at/webdab-emission-database. This database contains emissions of main acidifying and eutrophying pollutants, heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and particulate matter, all being available as total national or by activity sectors.

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

61

(2009–onward), the infusion in 2008–2009 of second-hand (oil-based) cheaper cars from Western Europe after Romania joined to EU in 2007 (the conclusion is supported by NIS database analysis, graph not shown here), and the massive shutdown of plants and factories during 1990–2000. Figure 4.3 shows how, after the shutdown of industrial facilities in 1990, all emitted pollutants decreased. The general decreasing trend suggests the combined positive effects of newer technologies, use of fuels with lower sulfur content, increasing use of natural gas (39% in industry, 35% residential sector, 14% heating in commercial sectors and public institutions, shares as mentioned by Nastase et al. (2018), and promotion of energy production from renewable sources: hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal (Colesca and Ciocoiu 2013; Dragomir et  al. 2016; Chiritescu et al. 2020), mainly from 2012–2013, as Fig. 4.3b shows. However, a significant peak in PM10 and PM2.5 levels around 1997–1998  in Fig.  4.3a is pronounced, followed by a secondary one in 2007–2008. These peaks are not so marked for NOx and SOx, but they are noticeable. Among possible reasons could be the positive correlations with economic developments (Chiritescu et  al. 2019), some peaks in investments, and vehicle fleet changes. The average PM2.5/PM10 mass ratios over the entire period 1990–2018 indicate a worrying aspect: a large fraction of PM emissions consists of fine particulates, both in the EU-28 mean (67%) and Romania (74%). The finding points to the potential of pollution by fine particulates to aggravate certain diseases (Pope and Dockery 2006). Focusing on the country level, a glimpse of PM10 absolute emission values resulting from road transportation in Europe and Romania can be seen in Fig. 4.4. The HTAP_V2 dataset from the EDGAR database (Crippa et al. 2020) shows that PM10 annual emission in 2010 in Bucharest exceeds 20 tons while for main transportation routes across the country, level of PM10 situates between 1 and 10 tons. Considering that the NIS database indicated an increase in vehicles from 1.1 million in 2010 to about 1.5 million in 2019, the pollution due to traffic has significantly increased at present in Bucharest urban area.

4.6  A  nalysis of the Evolution of Atmospheric Pollutant Levels Reductions of pollutant emissions at both European and Romanian scales determined reductions in atmospheric pollutant concentrations and improved air quality levels. The decreasing trend of atmospheric mass concentrations of major air pollutants CO, NO2, O3, PM10, and SO2 in 2005 (up), 2010 (middle), and 2018 (down) is shown in Fig. 4.5, as provided by the EURAD model, which represents one of the

62

G. Iorga

Fig. 4.4 PM10 emission resulting from road transportation in Europe and Romania in 2010. (Figure created using image file from EDGAR HTAP_V2 website https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/)

seven models used by Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) of with Copernicus Programme.4 The mass concentration maps in Fig. 4.5 are produced based on the measured input data transmitted by each country’s national monitoring networks. Based on these maps, Romania seems to fit well within the range of measurements on a European scale. However, because the Environmental European Agency Portal5 (European Environment Agency) provides us with up-to-date AQ monitoring data in Europe, a more thorough analysis on instantaneous values of atmospheric concentrations for specific days can reveal the lack of input data for many times and the low density of the network when we compare with Western Europe. In this case, the pollution hotspots across Romania became more challenging to distinguish. Figure 4.6 shows the variation of mass concentrations of PM10 and NOx for traffic

4  Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme, coordinated and managed by the European Commission. It is implemented in partnership with the member states, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), EU Agencies, and Mercator Ocean. It provides freely and openly information to help service providers, public authorities, and other international organizations to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Europe and is based on satellite Earth Observation and in situ (non-space) observations of various pollutants (detailed list can be found at https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/node/132) in order to produce air quality forecast over Europe at specific time. Among data sources is the database (http://air-climate.eionet.europa.eu/databases/airbase) of European Environment Agency (https://www.eionet.europa.eu/) for which Romanian National Agency for Environmental Protection (http://www.anpm.ro/) provides in situ ground-based measurements collected within National Air Quality Monitoring Network (www.calitateaer.ro). 5  https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/explore-interactive-maps/up-to-date-air-quality-data

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

63

Fig. 4.5  Atmospheric mass concentration of CO, NO2, O3, PM10, and SO2 (from left to right) in January 15, 2005 (up), versus January 15, 2010 (middle), versus January 15, 2018 (down), as provided by EURAD model. (http://www.uni-­koeln.de/math-­nat-­fak/geomet/eurad/index_ref.html)

Fig. 4.6  AQ monitoring in Bucharest, traffic station Mihai Bravu, from January 1 to December 31, 2019; mass concentrations of PM10 and NOx in μg m−3 and CO in mg m−3. (Data source: www.calitateaer.ro)

station in Bucharest during the entire year of 2019. We can conclude that, whereas the decreasing trend is proof of EU directives’ implementation in Romania, Romania’s low data coverage suggests syncope in air quality monitoring. On the other hand, the scientific literature on the topic reveals many exceedances of the air quality standards are registered in different monitoring stations across the country.

64

G. Iorga

The published data (e.g., Raicu and Iorga 2009; Haiduc and Beldean-Galea 2011; Iorga et al. 2015; Iorga 2016; Sfîcă et al. 2018; Velea et al. 2020) highlights that pollution due to particulate matter and nitrogen oxides still represents a severe problem over many regions, with systematic exceedances and particular high peaks of pollution episodes. The year 2005 was one of the most critical in terms of the number of stations that recorded concentrations above the limit value and exceeding days. The average of atmospheric PM2.5/PM10 mass concentration ratios is between 0.38 (Iasi) and 0.71 (Miercurea Ciuc), indicating a higher contribution to PM10 samples of coarse particles for Iasi and of fine fraction for Miercurea Ciuc. Together with results for Cluj-Napoca site (0.63) and Bucharest (from 0.7 for industrial sites to 0.8 for a traffic site in the very center of the city), our observations are consistent with the PM2.5/PM10 mass ratios from 0.5 to 0.9 at most sites across Europe (Iorga 2016). When air pollution sources are searched for, topographic specificities and regional and local meteorology and climate should be investigated. In this respect, the number of temperature inversions that increased by more than 10% in the last 10 years for Bucharest or poor air ventilation due to geographical characteristics in the cases of Brasov or Miercurea Ciuc could also be among the factors responsible for the higher pollutant levels. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to elaborate on the issue for each Romanian region. Still, Fig. 4.7 shows the modeled dispersion patterns for Bucharest, Brasov, and Iasi for atmospheric PM10 and NO2 comparatively. One can observe major differences between the dispersion patterns with red hotspots pointing to the highest values (figure legends provide the absolute values for 2015). This suggests that, apart from accurate source identification, to reach the general

Fig. 4.7  Modeled pollution by PM10 (up) and NO2 (down) in 2015 in three main cities: Bucharest (left), Brasov (center), and Iasi (right)

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

65

goal of compliance with EU air quality limits, Romania needs a strong and direct local administrations’ involvement to implement complementary/supplementary local policies. Specific administrative actions are necessary.

4.7  E  volution of Implementation of Air Quality Public Policies in Romania Air quality assessment with high accuracy and air pollution monitoring pose their challenges; neither the assessment nor the monitoring is simple and straightforward, and Romania made efforts to cope with by transposing the EU acquis, legislation, and standards. As examples, determinations of PM10 and PM2.5 mass concentrations are obtained by the gravimetric method following the standards SR EN 12341:2002 (ASRO 2002) and SR EN 14907:2006 (ASRO 2006). Transposition of corresponding standards for analytical determination techniques, like atomic absorption spectrometry (heavy metals in PM samples), UV fluorescence (SO2), chemiluminescence (NOx), nondispersive IR absorption (CO), and UV photometry (O3), has also been done. The Environmental Performance Review by UN (United Nations 2001) provides details of Romania’s efforts in adopting the EU legal and policy framework to make all necessary institutional arrangements before joining to European Union in January 10, 2007. Before 2007, for transposing the EU Directive 2001/50/EC, was issued the Order nr 595/2002 concerning the establishment of limit values, threshold values, and evaluation criteria and methods of SO2, NO2, and NOx, PM10 and PM2.5, Pb, C6H6, CO, O3 in the ambient air. At present, with respect to the transposition of EU Directives into Romanian legislation, the web pages of the National Agency for Environmental Protection (www.anpm.ro, www.calitateaer.ro) and on Ministry of Environment, Waters, and Forests (MMAP) mention all laws, government decisions, and orders in force, proving the transposition of EU acquis transparently. According to the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS), which covers all large greenhouse gas emitters in the industry, power, and aviation sectors in the EU, Romania had lower emissions than its annual targets in 2013–2017. For 2020, Romania’s national target under the EU Effort Sharing Decision is to avoid increasing emissions by more than 19% compared to 2005. By 2030, Romania’s national target under the Effort Sharing Regulation will reduce emissions by 2% compared to 2005. Romania has a 2016–2030 National Climate Change and low carbon growth strategy complemented with a 2016–2020 National Action Plan to implement the strategy. The government has adopted both documents in 2016 (European Commission 2019a).

66

G. Iorga

4.8  T  he Infringements Against Romania in the Air Quality Field and to Whom Is Present Status Due? In 2019, the Commission launched 797 infringement cases with the highest number in Environment (175). At present, Romania has to face such an infringement procedure. A search of the European Commission Infringement Decision Database for infringement cases for Romania, for policy area: Environment (European Commission), returns a result file with 359 infringement cases (active and closed) between 2007 and August 1, 2020, with noncommunication cases being also included. From this list, under the title Air and concerning air pollutants and climate change, one can count 58 cases (active and closed). The infringement cases are directed to PM10, NO2 exceedances, breach of Directive 2008/50/EC as regards the respect of limit values in Romania, inadequate application of Directives 2008/50/ EC and 2004/107/EC and the Commission Implementing Decision 2011/850/EU, industrial emissions-lack of permits of large combustion plants and exceedances, and failure to submit the National Air Pollution Control Programme of Romania under Article 6 of Directive 2016/2284/EU. The infringement procedure especially targets cities of Bucharest, Brasov, and Iasi. Moreover, Baia Mare, Craiova, Ploiesti, and Copsa Mica were in focus, among others, over time (e.g., EU Decision C9173, 2010 (European Commission 2010)). What the Commission blames in the first place is the short and unconvincing presentation of relevant information to conclude as to why PM levels are frequently exceeded. For example, Romania claims for unfavorable climatic conditions to be responsible for some exceedances but fails to provide enough and convincing scientific observational data that an independent expert would use to repeat the analysis. The outcome of the second analysis should validate the conclusion provided by the Romanian authorities to the Commission. Secondly, the Commission observes that Romania presents its reports with delays. By combining the two methods, Romania systematically tries to obtain derogations from its obligations to apply the limit values imposed by Directive 2008/50/EC on Ambient Air Quality and Cleaner Air for Europe. The Commission also observes that data quality is low. Although the emissions of several air pollutants have decreased, as has been shown, Romania needs to make additional efforts to meet its emission reduction commitments, as NEC Directive 2016/2284/EU states. Among the priority actions recommended to Romania in 2019 are accelerate reductions in NO2, NOx, PM10, PM2.5; upgrade and improve the air quality-monitoring network, and ensure timely reporting of air quality data; and reduce the use of coal for domestic heating. EC also called on Romania to improve the implementation, on its territory, of EU rules on permits for industrial installations, according to Directive 2010/75/EC on industrial emissions, by sending at present a reasoned opinion (Turcu 2020). Romania has 3 months to adopt and communicate all necessary measures to ensure the Directive’s full and correct application; otherwise, the Commission may refer the matter to the European Union Court of Justice.

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

67

According to a special report from the European Court of Auditors (European Court of Auditors 2018), EU actions to protect human health from air pollution had not their expected impact, and the risk exists that air pollution to be underestimated in some instances because it may not always be monitored in the right places. For Romania in 2017, “exceedances related to the annual limit value for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were registered in 5 (out of 54) air quality zones (including Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, and Iasi). Exceedances have also been registered related to particulate matter (PM10) in 4 (out of 54) air quality zones (including Iasi, Bucharest, and Brasov) and related to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 2 (out of 54) air quality zones (Iasi and Brasov). However, due to reporting and monitoring deficiencies, the compliance situation cannot be established with certainty. Based on the information received in the ongoing infringement case on monitoring and reporting, Romania promises to correct the reporting as soon as possible and have the monitoring system up to standard for 2019. Due to the persistent breaches of air quality standards for PM10, the Commission has decided to refer Romania to the European Court of Justice for exceeding PM10 levels (see COM (2018) 330).” In synthesis, Romania experienced a series of infringements procedures between 2007 and 2020, especially directed on air pollutants PM10 and NO2 concerning systematic exceedances of limit values in Directive 2008/50/EC and on delays or noncommunications in due time of the status of implementation. A very recent decision (in spring of 2020) of the European Court of Justice is concerning Romania’s failure to fulfill its obligations under Directive 2008/50/EC especially for Bucharest (Romania Insider 2020). The decision of the EU Court of Justice does not set a fine to be paid by Romania for breaching the European air quality treaty and legislation. Nevertheless, the obligation to comply with them remains, and the Court ordered Romania to cover the legal fees. Despite progress made (the number of infringement decreased in time), what cannot be seen is when Romania will succeed to fulfill its obligations, which is the “stop moment” of the infringement cases. Along with other environmental policy areas, meeting EU directives’ requirements in the air quality field is one of Romania’s critical challenges. In this context, what combination of factors or vulnerabilities allows us to understand what happened? For a country with poor records in environmental protection, the EU acquis in the area of air pollution seems to be a significantly complex one, apart from the fact that the whole area is one of the most complexes, given that the sources of pollution are so diverse and affected by so many factors. Therefore, the complexity of directives is, no doubt, an essential element that might partially explain the difficulty Romania has in successfully tackling air pollution, especially in large cities (Nita 2020). Romania is not the single country that faced this aspect; as an example, Croatia and Ireland had to overcome it (Samardžija and Dukes 2008). Although Romania’s legislation seems to reflect well the EU air quality policy, the implementation of these requirements is far from successful. From the point of “goodness-of-­ fit” approach, a significant difference is observed between the national level status quo and the aims of Directive 2008/50/EC and the other relevant conventions in the field. Among the reasons seem to be a lack of up-to-date infrastructure and insufficient funding for monitoring devices’ maintenance and operating costs, including

68

G. Iorga

human costs. The probably limited experience in developing the monitoring capacity has led to one of the least developed administrative capacity. Low administrative efficiency and coordination, as previously van den Bossche (1996) and Mastenbroek (2005) showed, with frequent shortcomings of communications between various levels of administration and agencies might also play a role, as well. Lack of an environmental culture of the population and veto player’s institutional decisionmaking constraints contribute to the environmental policy’s limited success, as well. These might be some of the reasons that the “goodness-of-fit” is the lowest (Mastenbroek and Kaeding 2006) (Cugleșan 2019). The in-depth discussion in this chapter shows that a combination of several factors leads to the fact that Romania has been a significant laggard in implementing the EU acquis in the air quality field.

4.9  Conclusions The challenge of managing air pollution is a significant one because the topic is very complex (many air pollutants coming from various sources and being affected by various factors). It necessitates important funds for monitoring and abatement programs and requests strong political and social will for the long term to tackle provocations in defining a policy to limit emissions. Since 1990, real progress has been made in Romania but much to do remains. Romania transposed the EU acquis and international legislation in the air pollution field into national law. Strategic alliances and participation in various EU and international programs started or are ongoing. Therefore, the effort for implementation has been made, which is reflected in the general decreasing trend of all major pollutants (except emissions of particulate matter). Moreover, the body and level of scientific knowledge in the air pollution field based on air pollution data from the AQ Monitoring Network increased at the country level. However, as a result of data analysis and literature review, practical implementation of EU directives suffers from technical deficiencies, lack of investments in up-­ to-­date instruments for monitoring, and probably in the training of the personnel in the up-to-date international techniques for further physical and chemical analyses, possible due to limited interest. Low administrative efficiency, passing the responsibility from one entity to another, and shortcomings of communications between Romanian responsible factors and the EU Commission seem to be frequent. Lack of an environmental culture of the population and veto player’s institutional decision-­ making constraints also contribute to the environmental policy’s limited success. From the point of “goodness-of-fit” approach, it can be observed a significant difference between the national-level status quo and the aims of Directive 2008/50/EC and the other relevant conventions in the field. Among the next steps, and apart from all the measures already taken, the Commission recommends improvements of the INSPIRE Directive and improvements for accessibility of spatial data through “view and download” services of the ANPM portal. Following the NEC Directive 2016/2284/EU, Romania should also

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

69

accelerate efforts to reduce NO2, NOx, PM10, and PM2.5, upgrade and improve the air quality-monitoring network, ensure timely reporting of air quality data, and reduce the use of coal for domestic heating. The following elements could also be considered: tight and long-term collaboration of government and its agencies with academic research groups (Romanian and foreign) for knowledge transfer, local administrations, and stakeholders, NGOs with interest in parallel monitoring of air quality and in increasing the people and mostly young generation awareness and commitment to take a positive attitude in environmental issues. In the long run, investment of resources (both financial and human) in raising awareness among citizens and creating a culture (Falkner and Treib 2008) of environmental issues is also an essential aspect of attaining success in the quest for environmental protection. As nowadays there is more emphasis on developing high-tech or value-added products, collaboration with research groups or companies interested in developing networks of low-cost sensors (e.g., Voina et al. 2017) for implementation of the new concepts as of SMART cities should be taken into account, as well (Romania Journal 2020). Acknowledgments  The research leading to these results has received funding from the NO Grants 2014-2021, under Project contract no 31/2020, and partial funding from the University of Bucharest project UB198. Energy production and CO2 emission data were provided by the National Institute of Statistics http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-­online/. Supplemental emission data was extracted from the CEIP/EMEP-WebDab database www.ceip.at/webdab_emep database/ missions_emepmodels. The author acknowledges all teams’ joint effort from US-EPA, the MICS-­ Asia group, EMEP/TNO, the REAS, and the EDGAR group for free access to the EDGAR emission database global grid maps (https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/htap_v2/index.php). Figure 4.5 was obtained using the EURAD model (http://www.uni-­koeln.de/math-­nat-­fak/geomet/eurad/index_ ref.html). Atmospheric pollution data for producing Fig. 4.5 has, among other sources (mentioned in the chapter body), the RNMAQN database: www.calitateaer.ro/. The author thanks Dr. C. Balaceanu, for providing the dispersion maps of PM10 and NO2 in Fig. 4.7. The author appreciates all the suggestions and comments of Dr. A. Todor that helped improve the discussion in Sect. 4.9 of the chapter.

References ASRO. 2002 Air Quality. Determination of the PM10 Fraction of Suspended Particulate Matter. Reference Method and Field Test Procedure to Demonstrate Reference Equivalence of Measurement Methods, Asociatia de Standardizare din România, SR EN 12341:2002. ———. 2006. Ambient air quality – standard gravimetric measurement method for the determination of the PM[2,5] mass fraction of suspended particulate matter, Asociatia de Standardizare din România, SR EN 14907:2006. Baldasano, J., E. Valera, and P. Jimenez. 2003. Air quality data from large cities. The Science of the Total Environment 307: 141–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-­9697(02)00537-­5. BBC News. 2019. Amazon fires: What’s the latest in Brazil? BBC News. Bodor, K., R.  Boga, T.  Pernyeszi, et  al. 2020. Variation of PM10 concentration depending on the meteorological parameters in two Bucharest monitoring stations (in green areas). Present Environment and Sustainable Development 14. https://doi.org/10.15551/pesd2020141022. Chiritescu RV, Dumitru A, Iorga G (2020) Pollutant emissions, economic growth and the role of energy consumption in Romania. EAC2020 Abstr EAC2020-534.

70

G. Iorga

Chiritescu, R.V., T. Hriscan, A. Diamandi, et al. 2019. Air pollution by aerosol at the Romanian scale: Emissions, atmospheric concentrations and correlations with economic development. Geophysical Research Abstracts 21: EGU2019-322. CIRCABC.  Article 33 plants final list.pdf. https://circabc.europa.eu/sd/a/952a062c-­189b-­48f7-­ 9a35-­60189b92b467/Article%2033%20plants%20final%20list.pdf. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Colesca, S.E., and C.N.  Ciocoiu. 2013. An overview of the Romanian renewable energy sector. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 24: 149–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.rser.2013.03.042. Crippa, M., G.  Janssens-Maenhout, F.  Dentener, et  al. 2016. Forty years of improvements in European air quality: Regional policy-industry interactions with global impacts. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16: 3825–3841. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-­16-­3825-­2016. Crippa, M., E. Solazzo, G. Huang, et al. 2020. High resolution temporal profiles in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Scientific Data 7: 121. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41597-­020-­0462-­2. Cugleșan N (2019) Post accession compliance with EU environmental legislation in Romania and Bulgaria in the first ten years of EU membership. Conditionality and social learning, as drivers of success? Denver, Colorado. Dragomir, G., A. Șerban, G. Năstase, and A.I. Brezeanu. 2016. Wind energy in Romania: A review from 2009 to 2016. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 64: 129–143. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.05.080. EMEP. Officially reported emission data. https://www.ceip.at/webdab-­emission-­database/ reported-­emissiondata. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. European Commission EU. Clean Air Forum. In European Commission – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/eu-­clean-­air-­forum-­2019-­nov-­28_en. Accessed 6 Oct 2020a. European Commission. 2019a. Country reports – Environment – European Commission. https:// ec.europa.eu/environment/eir/country-­reports/index_en.htm. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. ———. 2019b. Evaluarea punerii în aplicare a politicilor de mediu RAPORT DE ȚARĂ ROMÂNIA. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/eir/pdf/report_ro_ro.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. ———. 2019c. The costs of not implementing EU environmental law study: final report. https:// data.europa.eu/doi/10.2779/192777. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. European Commission Infringement Decisions. https://ec.europa.eu/atwork/applying-­eu-­law/ infringements-­proceedings/infringement_decisions/?lang_code=ro. Accessed 10 Oct 2020b. European Commission. (2010). DECIZIE A COMISIEI din 17.12.2010 privind notificarea unei derogări de la obligația de a aplica valorile-limită pentru PM10 în unsprezece zone de calitate a aerului prezentată de România. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/quality/legislation/pdf/ RO1_RO_ACT.pdf. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. European Commission Standards Air Quality  – Environment. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/ air/quality/standards.htm. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. European Court of Auditors. 2018. Special report no 23/2018: Air pollution: Our health still insufficiently protected. https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=46723. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. European Environment Agency Up-to-date air quality data  — European Environment Agency. https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-­and-­maps/explore-­interactive-­maps/up-­to-­date-­air-­quality-­ data. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. European Parliament and of the Council. 2001a. Directive 2001/81/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2001 on national emission ceilings for certain atmospheric pollutants. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2001/81/oj/eng. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. ———. 2001b. Directive 2001/80/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2001 on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from large combustion plants. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2001/80/oj/eng. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. ———. 2008. Directive 2008/1/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 January 2008 concerning integrated pollution prevention and control. https://eur-­lex.europa.eu/ legal-­content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32008L0001&from=EN

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

71

———. 2010. Directive 2010/75/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 November 2010 on industrial emissions (integrated pollution prevention and control) Text with EEA relevance. http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/2010/75/oj/eng. Accessed 3 Oct 2020. ———. 2015. Directive (EU) 2015/2193 of the European Parliament and of the Council – of 25 November 2015 – on the limitation of emissions of certain pollutants into the air from medium combustion plants. ———. 2017. Regulation (EU) 2017/852 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 May 2017 on mercury, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1102/2008. Accessed 10 Oct 2020. ———. 2012 Directive 2012/18/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances, amending and subsequently repealing Council Directive 96/82/EC. Accessed 10 Oct 2020. European Parliament and the Council Directive (EU) 2016/2284 of the European Parliament and of the Council – of 14 December 2016 – on the reduction of national emissions of certain atmospheric pollutants, amending Directive 2003/35/EC and repealing Directive 2001/81/EC. 31. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three worlds of compliance or four? The EU-15 compared to new member states. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. Gudmundsson, M.T., T.  Thordarson, Á. Höskuldsson, et  al. 2012. Ash generation and distribution from the April–May 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. Scientific Reports 2: 572. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00572. Haiduc, I., and M.S. Beldean-Galea. 2011. Variation of Greenhouse Gases in Urban Areas-Case Study: CO2, CO and CH4 in Three Romanian Cities. In Air Quality – Models and Applications, ed. D. Popovic, 289–318. Rijeka: INTech. https://doi.org/10.5772/17985. Harrison, R.M. 2007. Understanding our Environment: An Introduction to Environmental Chemistry and Pollution. Royal Society of Chemistry, Thomas Graham House, Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 OWF, UK. Hill, P.J. 1992. Environmental Problems under Socialism. Cato Journal 2: 321–335. Houthuijs, D., O. Breugelmans, G. Hoek, et al. 2001. PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in Central and Eastern Europe: Results from the Cesar study. Atmospheric Environment 35: 2757–2771. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-­2310(01)00123-­6. Iorga, G. 2016. Air Pollution Monitoring: A Case Study from Romania. In Air Quality  – Measurement and Modeling, ed. P. Sallis. Rijeka: INTech. https://doi.org/10.5772/64919. Iorga, G., C. Balaceanu Raicu, and S. Stefan. 2015. Annual air pollution level of major primary pollutants in Greater Area of Bucharest. Atmospheric Pollution Research 6: 824–834. https:// doi.org/10.5094/APR.2015.091. IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobson, M.Z. 2002. Atmospheric Pollution: History, Science, and Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LRTAP. LRTAP – Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants. http://www.htap.org/. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Manolache, G., S. Stefan, and G. Iorga. 2019. Aerosol direct radiative forcing: Seasonal variability in Bucharest area, Romania. Romanian Journal of Physics 64: 808. MAPM. 2002. ORDIN 592 25/06/2002  – Portal Legislativ. http://legislatie.just.ro/Public/ DetaliiDocumentAfis/39199. Accessed 10 Oct 2020. Mastenbroek, E. 2005. EU compliance: Still a ‘black hole’? Journal of European Public Policy 12: 1103–1120. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760500270869. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit: Domestic Politics in the Forefront. Comparative European Politics 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/ palgrave.cep.6110078. MH, and MWFEP. 1997. The Romanian National Environmental Health Action Plan Final Draft. Ministry of Health and Ministry of Water, Forestry and Environmental Protection.

72

G. Iorga

MMAP. 2020. COMUNICAT DE PRESĂ – Rețeaua Națională de Monitorizare a Calității Aerului va fi extinsă cu 60 de stații noi | Ministerul Mediului. http://www.mmediu.ro/articol/comunicat-­ de-­presa-­reteaua-­nationala-­de-­monitorizare-­a-­calitatii-­aerului-­va-­fi-­extinsa-­cu-­60-­de-­statii-­ noi/3428. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. MMAP. Atmosfera / Poluare | Ministerul Mediului. http://www.mmediu.ro/categorie/atmosfera-­ poluare/18. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Năstase, G., A. Șerban, A.F. Năstase, et al. 2018. Air quality, primary air pollutants and ambient concentrations inventory for Romania. Atmospheric Environment 184: 292–303. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2018.04.034. Nathanson, J.A. 2020. Air pollution – Ozone. In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica. com/science/air-­pollution. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Nita, A. 2020. The Problem of Air Quality in Romania  – From Monitoring to Sanctioning. The Judicial Decision of C.J.U.E. in Case C-638/18 Commission versus Romania. Revista Universul Juridic 2020:280. Pope, C.A., and D.W. Dockery. 2006. Health Effects of Fine Particulate Air Pollution: Lines that Connect. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association 56: 709–742. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/10473289.2006.10464485. Popescu, F., I.  Ionel, N.  Lontis, et  al. 2011. Air quality monitoring in an urban agglomeration. Romanian Journal of Physics 56: 495–506. Putaud, J.-P., F.  Raes, R.  Van Dingenen, et  al. 2004. A European aerosol phenomenology—2: Chemical characteristics of particulate matter at kerbside, urban, rural and background sites in Europe. Atmospheric Environment 38: 2579–2595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. atmosenv.2004.01.041. Raicu, C., and G.  Iorga. 2009. Air pollution episodes in larger area of Bucharest. Geophysical Research Abstracts 11: EGU2009-754-2. Romania Insider. 2020. EU Court of Justice: Romania has systematically breached air pollution limits in Bucharest. Romania Insider. https://www.romania-­insider.com/eu-­court-­justice-­ bucharest-­pollution. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Romania Journal. 2020. Smart Cities in Romania: 594 projects in 87 cities. The Romania Journal. https://www.romaniajournal.ro/business/smart-­cities-­in-­romania-­594-­projects-­in-­87-­cities/. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. Samardžija, V., and A.  Dukes. (eds.) 2008. Communicating integration impact in Croatia and Ireland. Institute for International Relations – IMO; Institute for International and European Affairs – IIEA, Zagreb: Dublin. Seinfeld, J.H., and S.N. Pandis. 2016. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics: From Air Pollution to Climate Change. Hoboken: Wiley. Sfîcă, L., I. Iordache, P. Ichim, et al. 2018. Influence of Weather Conditions and Local Climate on Particulate Matter (PM10) Concentration in Metropolitan Area of Iasi. Romania. Present Environment and Sustainable Development 12. https://doi.org/10.2478/pesd-­2018-­0029. Soporan, V.F., L.  Nascutiu, B.  Soporan, and C.  Pavai. 2015. Case studies of methane dispersion patterns and odor strength in vicinity of municipal solid waste landfill of Cluj–Napoca, Romania, using numerical modeling. Atmospheric Pollution Research 6: 312–321. https://doi. org/10.5094/APR.2015.035. Ştefănuţ, S., A. Manole, M.C. Ion, et al. 2018. Developing a novel warning-informative system as a tool for environmental decision-making based on biomonitoring. Ecological Indicators 89: 480–487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.02.020. Ștefănuț, S., K. Öllerer, A.  Manole, et  al. 2019. National environmental quality assessment and monitoring of atmospheric heavy metal pollution  – A moss bag approach. Journal of Environmental Management 248: 109224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.06.125. Szép, R., Z. Bodor, I. Miklóssy, et al. 2019. Influence of peat fires on the rainwater chemistry in intra-mountain basins with specific atmospheric circulations (Eastern Carpathians, Romania). Science of the Total Environment 647: 275–289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.07.462.

4  Air Pollution and Environmental Policies, EU and Romania…

73

Szep, R., R. Keresztes, A. Korodi, et al. 2017. Study of Air Pollution and Atmospheric Stability in Ciuc Basin  – Romania. Revista de Chimie 68: 1763–1767. https://doi.org/10.37358/ RC.17.8.5760. Turcu, S. 2020. România: proceduri de infringement în domeniul mediului privind exploatarea forestieră ilegală, calitatea aerului și protejarea rețelelor Natura 2000. In România – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/romania/news/20200702_infringement_mediu_ro. Accessed 7 Oct 2020. United Nations. 2001. Environmental Performance Reviews: Romania: First Review. UN. van den Bossche, P. 1996. In Search of Remedies for Non-Compliance: The Experience of the European Community. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 3: 371–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X9600300404. Velea, L., M.T.  Udristioiu, R.  Bojariu, and S.  Sararu. 2020. Statistical characteristics of particulate matter (PM10) concentration in Romanian selected urban areas based on CAMS-­ regional ensemble model reanalysis. AIP Conference Proceedings 2218: 030003. https://doi. org/10.1063/5.0001047. Voina, A., A. Topor, G. Alecu, et al. 2017. Integrated sensors networks into an acquisition platform for the air quality monitoring. Revue roumaine des sciences techniques. Série Electrotechnique et énergétiqu 62: 305–310. Voinea, S., G. Manolache, G. Iorga, and S. Stefan. 2018. Relationships between PM10 mass concentrations and aerosol optical parameters over Magurele, Romania. Romanian Reports in Physics 70: 705–716. WHO. 2018. How air pollution is destroying our health. In World Health Organization. https:// www.who.int/news-­room/spotlight/how-­air-­pollution-­is-­destroying-­our-­health. Accessed 6 Oct 2020. Yoo, J.-M., Y.-R. Lee, D. Kim, et al. 2014. New indices for wet scavenging of air pollutants (O3, CO, NO2, SO2, and PM10) by summertime rain. Atmospheric Environment 82: 226–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2013.10.022. Gabriela Iorga obtained her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bucharest in 2007. Since 1998, Gabriela is a lecturer at the University of Bucharest. She has supervised many projects and theses at undergraduate and post-graduate level, participated in many research projects, and acts as reviewer in 10 scientific journals. She has also made numerous presentations in international conferences and published several chapters and articles in scientific journals. Gabriela is a senior researcher with interests in: atmospheric physics, air pollution, aerosol–cloud–climate interaction, radiative changes determined by anthropogenic factors, scavenging of air pollutants from the atmosphere, and relationships between air pollution and socio-economic development.  

Chapter 5

Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental Fund Arpad Todor, Oana Hroștea, Maria Băran, and Robert Udrea

Abstract  Given its historical lack of interest for and underfunding of environmental policies, at the moment of accession, Romania had to allocate enormous funds to Europeanize its environmental policies to meet the standard imposed through the EU environmental acquis. Besides the EU structural funds, the Environmental Fund should have the primary funding source in environmental policies. We analyze the evolution of the fund and the administrative institutions created to administer across three dimensions – taxation capacity, monitoring, and project financing – and discuss the main constants of the fund’s functioning. We show that while its monitoring taxation capacity has improved, the revenue gap has remained constant. Instead, the evolution of funding priorities significantly focuses on the program designed to support the auto industry while ignoring most other areas, especially those requiring more investments to meet the obligations stemming from Romania’s EU membership.

5.1  Introduction As the global effort to limit the effects of human activities on the environment has accelerated, especially after the Kyoto Protocol, the importance of taxation as a policy tool to alter the structure of incentives for polluters and to include the real costs of pollution has become more critical. Furthermore, revenues from environmental taxes directly fund projects to mitigate humans’ adverse effects on the environment. By the moment of Romania’s accession to the European Union, these instruments have significantly evolved.

A. Todor (*) · O. Hroștea · M. Băran · R. Udrea Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_5

75

76

A. Todor et al.

As Romania had the most problems in closing Chapter 22 Environment of its accession negotiations and required the highest number of transitional arrangements, it had to commit to investing 15 billion euro for cofinancing various environmental projects in the 2007–2018 period, when the last transitional periods expired (CEROPE 2003). The key instrument for taxing polluters and gathering resources to fund environmental projects took place through the Environmental Fund, the institution created to manage it. We evaluate the degree to which this policy instrument has succeeded in becoming the instrument by which Romania would fulfill its obligation in the field of environmental acquis through all its three types of activities: taxation capacity, monitoring, and project financing. The chapter is structured as follows: first, we briefly present the primary type of market-based environmental policy instruments and define environmental taxes and depict the process of operationalizing the Environmental Fund (EF) and the Environmental Fund’s Administration (EFA). Second, we evaluate the evolution of EFA’s capacity to collect environmental taxes. Third, we present and discuss the development of EFA’s monitoring capacity. Fourth, we assess the EFA’s contribution to Romania’s Europeanization of environmental policies. We analyze the distribution of project financing across various public policy areas and discuss the extent to which financing was directed to those areas most problematic, identified by the number of transitional agreements and different infringement procedures. In the Conclusions, we discuss the main lessons brought forward by this chapter and possible avenues to improve the EFA’s contribution.

5.2  The Role of the Environmental Fund Environmental taxation is part of a broader set of instruments designed to change the polluter’s incentive structure. European Environment Agency labels them as market-based instruments and groups them into five categories (European Environmental Agency 2006). Tradable permits (certificates) stimulate pollution reduction (such as CO2 emissions) or reduce the intensity of resources use (such as fishing quotas) by providing economic incentives for trade. Environmental tariffs cover, partially or totally, the costs of ecological services and domestic water treatment. Subsidies and incentives aim to stimulate new technologies to help develop new markets for environment-related goods and services such as new technologies and consumers’ behavior change. They encourage the purchase of goods with less impact on the environment. Guarantee and compensation schemes ensure an adequate compensation level for damage caused by some activities with a high-risk degree on the environment. Environmental taxes aim to change the economic agents’ behavior by changing some resources’ prices and increasing budget revenues. The standard definition used by the OECD, International Energy Agency, and the European Commission refers to them as taxes imposed on those activities that impact the environment as

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental…

77

those taxes and mandatory payments to the central government levied on a tax base of particular relevance environment. The Environment Fund (EF) was created in 2000 at the start of Romania’s accession negotiations (Parliament of Romania 2000). It aimed to support the implementation of priority projects for environmental protection. The funds were due to be collected by the principles set out in European law: “the polluter pays” and “producer’s responsibility.” The institution designed to manage the EF, the Environmental Fund’s Administration (EFA), took another year to create (Government of Romania 2001). In practice, between 2001 and 2004, EFA did not function as an institution during this period accumulating tiny amounts concerning the legal provisions regarding payment obligations to the Environment Fund. Moreover, EFA funded only one project during this period. Following constant pressure from the EU and in the context negotiations on Romania’s derogations, in 2004, the government reorganized EFA to make it a functioning institution (Government of Romania 2004). Only with the adoption of a significant reshuffling of the EF (Government of Romania 2005) has this institution finally became operational and started to collect substantial revenues. It aimed to become “an economic-­ financial instrument destined for support and implementation of projects for environmental protection, by the legal provisions in force in the field of environmental protection.” The establishment of the EFA was a significant institutional effort as the institution was built from scratch and was funded exclusively from its income.

5.3  Evolution of Receipts to the Environmental Fund (EF) Table 5.1 shows the evolution of budgetary forecasts vs. fiscal revenues, as indicated in the Annual Reports. From the meager beginnings in the early 2000s, the introduction of the pollution tax for cars (Government of Romania 2008, p. 20) has propelled the percentage of EF receipts to 607% in 2009 compared to the previous year. As pollution tax revenues significantly decreased in the following years, the revenues have sensibly decreased but settled at higher than in 2008 (except 2016). One of the most important lessons regarding the AFM’s administrative capacity is its incapacity to ease its budgetary forecast for almost 15 years already. Year after year, AMF proposes to collect a specific amount and fails, with no sign of improvement. 2016 and 2019 were some of the worst years in this respect. This constant failure reflects both its limited administrative capacity and incapacity to process feedback and the budget forecasts (concerning the tax base). Despite the increased tax revenues, Fig. 5.1 indicates that, except for 2009 and 2010, the % of GDP has remained under 0.05% of forecasted GDP. At this level, FM’s resources are far from sufficient to fund the environmental policies to meet the standards set in the EU acquis. The relationship between forecasted and realized revenues remained the same in most years but increased for 2018 and 2019.

78

A. Todor et al.

Table 5.1  Evolution of budget forecasts and receipts for the Environmental Fund, 2002–2010 and 2014–2019 (millions of euro) Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Budget forecast

Receipts/budget forecast

60.2 83.6 96.6 114.9 374.9 399.6 176.8 223.1 174.2 117.8 233.5 527.5

52% 48% 39% 37% 53% 60% 48% 35% 29% 101% 59% 25%

Total receipts 3.9 14.3 18.8 31.1 40.2 37.9 42.0 198.6 238.3 85.2 78.2 49.8 119.3 84.6 145.2

% compared to the previous year 100% 362% 131% 165% 130% 94% 111% 132% 120% 92% 64% 240%

0.30% 0.25% 0.20% 0.15% 0.10% 0.05% 0.00% 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Forecast % of GDP

Realized revenues as % of GDP

Fig. 5.1  Evolution of forecasted and realized revenues by the Environmental Fund as % of GDP

In Table 5.2, we present the evolution forecast revenues by various categories of environmental taxes. As these are not the data on the realized taxation, it offers only an indirect view of Romania’s environmental taxation evolution. First of all, the analysis of the year-to-year distribution of forecasted revenues for different taxes shows a tremendous variation. However, changes are incremental in most areas covered by these taxes. For example, taxes on pollutant emissions continuously increased until 2010; then between 2014 and 2016, despite the negative evolutions reflected in the trigger of several infringement procedures, no revenues have been

0.002 6.50 0.75 2.08 2.08 1.35 0.92

0.001 0.001 5.00 57.50 0.63 0.71 3.13 2.08 0.00 0.77

2.37 2.37 1.18 0.87

10.42 26.04

2008

2006 2007 0.63 0.73 9.38 10.94 2.08 2.08

0.01

4.04

1.01

0.51 0.11 0.01 0.12

0.003 6.13 0.61

2010 345.52 12.13 7.07

2014 0.11 21.60 0.00 0.005 0.000 0.001 8.08 0.00 0.71 0.00 0.003 1.62 0.01 0.04 0.08 0.05 0.00 0.06 0.08

2009 342.53 12.13 4.04

0.00

2015 0.15 0.02 0.00 0.001 0.001 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.19 0.47 0.01 0.01

13.64

14.52

14.52

3.9%

2016 2017 2018 2019 % of total 90.76 1.03 64.5% 0.02 12.90 15.06 15.06 9.9% 0.00 2.07 1.77 1.77 3.9% 0.001 22.98 0.00 0.02 1.9% 0.001 7.300 0.000 0.063 0.6% 0.03 0.03 0.02 15.00 8.1% 3.02 2.63 2.89 0.00 1.0% 0.01 8.30 9.69 9.69 2.3% 10.60 0.01 11.93 0.01 2.7% 0.13 0.13 0.40 0.40 0.7% 0.62 0.00 0.00 0.33 0.3% 0.11 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.3%

a

(continued)

A 3% contribution from revenues from the sale of ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal and of goods for dismantling obtained by the holder of the waste b Taxes on emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere owed by economic operators holding stationary sources whose use affects environmental factors c The contribution to the circular economy received from landlords or, where applicable, landfill managers for municipal waste, construction waste, and disbandment intended for disposal by depositing d A 50 RON/Ton owed by territorial administrative units or, where appropriate, territorial administrative subdivisions of municipalities, in case of failure to meet the annual target for reducing the quantities of waste landfilled from municipal waste, payment being made for the difference between the quantity corresponding to the annual target and the actual quantity entrusted to recycling and other forms of revaluation e A contribution of 0.4 EUR/kg, owed by economic operators who place packaged goods on the national market, who distribute for the first time on the national market sales packages and from economic operators renting, in any form on a professional basis, packaging, for the difference between the quantities of packaging waste corresponding to the minimum revaluation or incineration objectives in incineration plants with energy recovery and revaluation by recycling and quantities of packaging waste entrusted for revaluation or incineration in incineration plants with energy recovery and revaluated by recycling f A 2% contribution from the value of substances classified as dangerous for the environment, placed on the national market by economic operators

Type of tax Pollution and first matriculation tax Ferrous and nonferrous scrap metala Air pollutionb Landfillc Failure to reduce waste targetsd Packagese Dangerous substancesf Oilsg Wood and wood materialsh Tiresi Huntingj Environmental approvals Agreements and permits Carrier bagsk

Table 5.2  Evolution of forecasted receipts by type of taxes 2006–2019 (millions of euro)

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental… 79

g

A tax of 0.3 RON/kg, applied a single time to the quantities of oils, based on mineral, semisynthetic, synthetic, with or without additions, owed by the economic operators who place such products on the national market h A 2% contribution from the revenues from the sale of wood and/or wood materials obtained by the administrator and the owner of the forest, excluding firewood, ornamental trees and bushes, Christmas trees, rockets, and saplings i A contribution of 0.4 EUR/kg per tire, owed by economic operators who place new and/or used tires for reuse on the national market, for the difference between the quantities of tires corresponding to the annual management obligations provided in the legislation in force and the quantities actually managed j A 3% contribution from the amount to be collected annually for the management of hunting funds, paid by hunting fund managers k The 0.15 RON/piece. Ecotax applied to the carrier bags. Except those made from materials that comply with the requirements of SR EN 13432:2002

Table 5.2 (continued)

80 A. Todor et al.

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental…

81

forecasted. After 2017, the forecasted revenues from this tax went down at a level under 2006. Another area where Romania has enormous problems meeting the accession treaty’s targets and respecting the EU acquis, waste management, shows the same picture. The contribution to the circular economy received from landlords or, where applicable, landfill managers for municipal waste, construction waste, and disbandment intended for disposal by depositing appears only starting 2014 and has a meager revenue forecast by 2016. A comeback follows a considerable jump for 2017 to a forecasted level that makes this tax instrument irrelevant. The situation is similar with the approximately 11 euro/ton tax owed by territorial administrative units or, where appropriate, territorial administrative subdivisions of municipalities, in case of failure to meet the annual target for reducing the quantities of waste landfilled from municipal waste, payment being made for the difference between the amount corresponding to the yearly target and the actual amount entrusted to recycling and other forms of revaluation. Considering that, as shown in chapter 1, Romania still has a disposal rate of 70% and failed to meet any single target of the transitional agreements or the current EU acquis, the evasion rate for this tax is significantly above 95%. We emphasize that the budget forecasts covered only a limited part of the base tax potential in other fields. Todor (2014) estimated a minimum 50% tax evasion in the area of revenues from the sale of wood and wood materials obtained by the administrator and the forest owner, excluding firewood, ornamental trees, bushes, Christmas trees, rockets, and saplings. Tax evasion increases to at least 75% in the field of contributions owed by economic operators who place new and used tires for reuse on the national market, for the difference between the quantities of tires corresponding to the annual management obligations provided in the legislation in force and the amounts managed. The limited capacity for budget forecasting by type of taxes is also underlined by the data in Table 5.2 on the evolution receipts to the Environmental Fund for the pollution tax for motor vehicles, according to OUG 50/2008. As evasion in this area is very low (due to strict control of the registered cars), achieving only 41.78% forecasted revenues in 2009 indicates the estimation methodology’s inefficiency. The forecasted revenue distribution reveals that the pollution and first matriculation tax have represented approximately 65% of all forecasted revenues, mostly in 2009 and 2010. Furthermore, as most of these funds were foreseen to fund the “Scrappage” program, aimed chiefly at supporting the automotive industry, we see that most of EF’s activity was not aimed at protecting the environment at all.

5.4  Inspection In Table 5.3, we present the evolution of EFA’s institutional capacity across several dimensions. While the overall staff constantly increased by 2016, and once the EFA staff grew, the procedures have decreased after 2007, partly determined by introducing the computerized program ATLAS. The application allowed an acceleration of

82

A. Todor et al.

Table 5.3  Evolution of EFA’s control, inspection, and recovery capacity (2005–2018) Functions Inspection activities Inspection reports Notifications Summons Fixed assets and deductions

2005 82 325 216 981 530 370

2006 2007 2008 103 110 138 391 194 143 267 301 643 1431 6022 522 973 4616 723 1631 1725

2009 141 283 328 2328 1653 1246

2010 NR 302 292 3800 2876 2251

2014 195 177 225

2015 218 209 148

2016 225 208 225

2017 243 282 263

2018 225 219 265

1220 2239 1750 9068 2131 287 773 4434 850 1013

inspection and identification activities, highlighting the EF’s obligations and forcing the economic operators’ execution that did not fulfill their financial obligation deadlines provided by law. Regarding records and inspection activities, EFA accounts for the taxpayers’ payments to the Environmental Fund through the ATLAS application aimed to register payment obligation to the EF. Thus, the total number of taxpayers registered in EFA records increased from 98,160 in 2006 to 203,653 in 2009. Also, the taxpayers’ records are obtained through inspection activities resulting in reports establishing the number of outstanding obligations that were not stated. Understandably, the number of inspections did not increase significantly during this period. Instead, EFA focused on recovering arrears through the method of identifying obligations voluntarily by other institutions. Once a payment overdue to EF is determined, it proceeds with measures to recover the commitments in the following order: notifications, summonses, immobilization of accounts, and declaring an insolvency procedure. There are large variations in terms of notifications from year to year. After the 6022 peaks in 2008, numbers decreased. Summons also had significant variations from one year. It ranged from a maximum of 4616  in 2008, a subsequent decrease by 2016, and an anomalous 2017. Overall, despite the sensible increase in AFM’s activity, the overall performance has not been felt either in terms of its forecasting capacity improvement, closing the gap between forecast and obtained taxes, or evaluating the overall tax based on the various taxes it handles.

5.5  Project Financing Despite its incapacity to collect the income it forecasted, the situation has never caused problems in its operational capacity to finance projects. The simple reason stems from the fact that AMF, except 2016 and 2017, contracted and funded projects within its tax receipts’ limits, not on the forecasted budget (Table 5.4 last two rows). As in tax receipts by areas, project financing reveals the same lack of coherence and correlation with the regions where Romania exhibits the highest number of environmental problems and the need for funding.

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental…

83

Table 5.4  Evolution of project financing by categories (millions of euro) Program A – pollution prevention B – reducing the impact on the atmosphere, water, and soil C – noise reduction D – protection of water resources, integrated water supply systems, treatment plants, and sewers E – waste management, including hazardous waste F – biodiversity conservation and management of protected natural areas G – afforestation of degraded lands, ecological reconstruction, and sustainable forest management H – education and public awareness on environmental protection I – increasing the production of energy from renewable sources M – carrying out monitoring, studies and research in the field of environmental protection and climate change on tasks arising from international agreements, European directives or other national or international regulations, as well as research and development in the field of climate change N – afforestation of degraded lands located in deficient areas in forests O – closure of tailing ponds in the mining sector P – carrying out works designed to prevent, remove, and/or reduce the effects produced by extreme weather events Q – (for firms) installation of heating systems using renewable energy, including replacement or completion of conventional heating systems Q – (for persons) installation of heating systems using renewable energy including replacement or completion of conventional heating systems R – national program for improving the quality of the environment by creating green spaces in urban areas S – program to stimulate the renewal of the national car park

2007– % of 2010 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 total 13.9 0 0 0 0 0 1% 9.5 0 0 0 0 0 1% 11.8 3.2

0 0 0 0 36.1 28.4 34.3 37.1

0 1% 19.6 16%

18.3

0

0

12.3

0.01

3.4

4.5

0.9

0.1

7.0

4.4

0.0

0.9

2.4

0.0

0.0

3.0

122.6

0.2

36.9

0.2

36.9

0.6

32.8

7.0

204.1

30.0

0

0

0

2% 1%

1.7

0.6

3.6

2.0

2%

0% 1.9

1.2

1%

7.4

0.3

0.3

1%

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0%

0.9

0.1

0.0

0% 12%

0.2

0.00

5.8

6.6

2.8

8.0

6%

0.2

1.4

0.4

0.3

4%

30.8 41.1

4%

55.7 36% (continued)

84

A. Todor et al.

Table 5.4 (continued) Program W – scrap plus program w – reducing greenhouse gas emissions in transport by promoting energy-free road transport vehicles – * recharging stations V – development and optimization program of the national air quality monitoring network Total funded value Total tax receipts

2007– 2010 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 0.0 0.2 2.1 0.0 0.1

% of total 0% 0%

0.0

10%

516.0 625

0.9

4.9

91.8

2.1

86.9 37.8 86.4 181.1 89.3 516.0 85.2 78.2 49.8 119.3 84.6 625

Despite the enormous problems in air quality, category A – pollution prevention projects were funded only until 2010 and then only for the category V Development and optimization program of the National Air Quality Monitoring Network. Other areas of particular importance are category B – reducing the impact on the atmosphere, water, and soil; category C – noise reduction; and category N – afforestation of degraded lands located in deficient areas in forests, were scantly financed by 2010 and abandoned afterward. Even worst, in the area of Category E-waste management. Including hazardous waste, not only that, EFA failed to properly tax waste generation and disposal but also to increase recycling incentives. EFA also eliminated any available financing after 2014, despite the dire situation revealed in chapter 1. The only area that can be considered a priority is the S category – renewal program of the national car park popularly called the “Scrappage” program. This program has included continuously between 2005 and 2010, from year to year, an increasing number of manufacturers, simultaneously extending the number of cars purchased, the contracts’ value, and the amounts financed. For 2008, the value contracted by EFA represented 242% of the value contracted in 2007, reaching 120 million lei, the highest jump recorded from one year to another in the presented time interval. The program started with 20 producers in 2005, going 56 in 2007, tripling in 2010 with 152 producers. The number of cars out of use through this program had a modest increase between 2005 and 2007 and doubled from 2007 to 2008 (16,444 cars destroyed in 2007 and 30,466 in 2008). However, the most substantial jump was made in 2010, when the number of broken cars represented 585% of the previous year’s figure. After 2014, the program continued to finance the acquisition of between 20,000 and 36,000 vehicles yearly. Unfortunately, EFA’s priorities do not seem to have a connection with Romania’s environmental priorities but with the priorities of supporting the auto industry or carrying out infrastructure works (for which money could have been allocated from other budget lines or POS). In contrast, areas where EFA represents the only source of funding are entirely ignored. In 12 of the 21 funding categories, no project submission sessions were carried out in 2009 and 2010, proving that the EF’s tendency to represent a fund of financial resources and less an instrument for the efficient support of environmental projects does not seem to change.

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental…

85

The analysis of the Environmental Fund Administration’s (EFA) evolution of institutional capacity reveals a mixed picture. On the one hand, putting aside the controversial pollution and first matriculation tax on cars, the total receipts to EFA have increased. While it has also strengthened its capacity of control, the introduction of the electronic registration system for the taxpayers, and the use of forced execution methods for outstanding obligations, the overall revenue gap has not been closed. As a result, project financing in most environmental policy areas was meager in most years. The budgetary receipts’ forecasting capacity remains low (37–60%), indicating the estimation methodology’s inefficiency. Worse, budget execution capacity is even lower, with percentages of budgetary provisions in 2007 and 2008 of only 19% and 20.55%, respectively, and a maximum of 39.20% in 2009. A detailed analysis of the funding rates of deposit, approval, and financing for the 21 categories reveals that a large part of the inability to execute the budget is due to EFA’s policy (Todor and Chiper 2014). For three financing categories, no money was used during the entire existence of EFA, and for the other seven types, in 2009 and 2010, not even one project was submitted. Also, for most areas where projects were submitted, the projects’ approval rate is incredibly low, ranging from 2.7% in 2010 to 21.2% in 2009. Beyond these technical details, EFA must continuously conduct project submission sessions for all funding lines and carry out the process of evaluating these applications in a transparent and timely manner. Events such as blocking the Casa Verde program, after 19,317 applications were submitted in 2010, are seriously affecting the credibility of EFA. At the beginning of this chapter, we defined the EF’s success in becoming the policy instrument capable of helping Romania meet its environmental obligations. We used AFM’s main activities, taxation capacity, monitoring, and project financing, as the benchmarks for this evaluation. While the FM and AFM were not part of accession negotiations or subsequent acquis, it’s transparent that the main impetus for their development came from Romania’s becoming part of the EU and the need to achieve its environmental standards. Nevertheless, analyzing the history of its operationalization reveals it took five years to bring both the FM and the AFM to a structure that could start to fulfill its functions meaningfully in its first two areas of activities. Instead, except for the Scrappage program, its functioning in terms of project financing has not reached efficient funding up to this day. Furthermore, the total lack of correlation between AFM’s financing priorities and Romania’s environmental priorities stemming from its obligation as an EU member puts a significant question mark on this policy’s overall success. While the budget forecast and execution could be quickly evaluated using institutions’ websites, AMF is the least transparent in explaining how its funding priorities determined and why its taxation gap has persisted over such a long time. Actually, during the documentation for the two studies that included an evaluation of AMF’s taxation, monitoring, and funding activities, it proved impossible to discuss with any of its representatives. Given its subordination to the Romanian government and directors’ constant appointments with no relevant expertise in the field, its funding priorities have always reflected the immediate political decisions and not any strategy or planning. As such, data in Table 5.4 reflects a broader picture

86

A. Todor et al.

of how environmental policy funding is conceived across the political spectrum. It reflects a still lagging Europeanization of Romania’s environmental public policies. Considering the array of taxes the EFA is supposed to collect and the definitions of these taxes, the EF ambitions were relatively high from a formal point of view. Given that it was not part of accession negotiations, the AFM was not part of the administrative capacity building through pre-accession conditionality (Sedelmeier 2016) and neither the norm diffusion through civil servants’ participation in the EU institutions (Braun 2014). Instead, the functioning of the EFA appears to have been plagued by the same problems identified by Buzogány (2009), especially the limited enforcement capacity, lack of coordination among various administration and agencies, and low salaries and absence of the necessary expertise. The analysis of the historical development of EFA identified no attempt to develop a cooperative model of governance for implementing, monitoring, and enforcing the taxes collected on various types of economic agents (Börzel 2009).

5.6  Conclusions The chapter analyzed the functionality of the Environmental Fund as administered by the Environmental Fund Administration. This institution’s functionality had the most significant potential to positively affect Romania’s administrative capacity across most other environmental policy fields. I also was designed to finance projects in the most sensible environmental policy field. On the one hand, no doubt that both EF and EFA’s creation and functioning represent in itself a success, as no such instrument previously existed in Romania. On the other hand, EFA’s example indicates  the continuous and relentless failure of the Europeanization of Romania’s environmental public policies. The situation shows that Romania will continue to remain in a close to bottom position in environmental protection efforts without a fundamental change in this area’s fiscal strategy. Unfortunately, most of the conclusions of the 2011 evaluation regarding EFA’s problems remain the same. Due to EFA’s problematic situation, a quick and significant restructuring of the way the EFA institution works is necessary. First of all, an independent audit must be performed regarding estimating the budgetary revenues for each category. It is essential to find out why, on specific income categories, the level of income is deficient compared to the potential tax base. Based on this analysis, EFA must assume a detailed plan to improve the inadequate categories’ collection capacity. EFA should aim for a much more balanced distribution of income across various environmental taxes. Furthermore, priority should be given to those taxes that would directly contribute to meeting Romania’s acquis obligations like waste disposal and pollution. An audit must also be carried out also regarding the incredibly low ability for budget execution. This audit should serve as a basis for implementing legislative modification proposals to eliminate any problems due to the inadequate legal framework. EFA’s funding priorities should focus on Romania’s most precarious

5  Europeanizing Environmental Public Policy Funding Through the Environmental…

87

environmental policy areas, especially those falling under the acquis to become an efficient environmental policy instrument. Also, EFA must restructure the criteria for granting the financing projects to correspond to each subdomain’s real investment needs. Also, EFA must be concerned with the active dissemination of information to obtain funding for potential applicants. Finally, in those areas where the applications’ low quality caused many rejected projects, the EFA must conduct training sessions with potential applicants.

References Börzel, T.A. 2009. Environmental Policy and the Challenge of Accession. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 32–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Braun, M. 2014. EU Climate Norms in East-Central Europe. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 445–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12101. Buzogány, A. 2009. Romania: Environmental Governance—Form without Substance. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 169–191. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. CEROPE. 2003. Environmental taxes in Romania, Study developed under the Phare RO Program. Bucharest: Romanian Center for Economic Policies (CEROPE). European Environmental Agency. 2006. Market-based instruments for environmental policy in Europe. Copenhagen. Government of Romania. 2001. Hotărârea nr. 1174/2001 pentru aprobarea Regulamentului de organizare și funcționare și a structurii organizatorice ale Administrației Fondului pentru Mediu (Decision no. 1174/2001 for the approval of the Regulation on the organization and functioning and of the organizational structure of the Administration of the Environmental Fund). ———. 2004 Hotărârea nr. 1989/2004 pentru aprobarea Regulamentului de organizare și funcționare a Administrației Fondului pentru Mediu și a structurii organizatorice a acesteia (Decision no. 1989/2004 for the approval of the Regulation on the organization and functioning of the Administration of the Environmental Fund and its organizational structure). ———. 2005. OUG 196 22/12/2005 privind Fondul de Mediu (GEO 196 22/12/2005 regarding the Environmental Fund). ———. 2008. OUG 50/2008 pentru instituirea taxei pe poluare pentru autovehicule (GEO 50 21/04/2008 for the establishment of the pollution tax for motor vehicles). Parliament of Romania. 2000. Legea nr. 73 din 4 mai 2000 privind Fondul pentru mediu (Law no. 73 of May 4, 2000 on the Environmental Fund). Sedelmeier, U. 2016. Compliance after Conditionality: Why Are the European Union’s New Member States So Good? Berlin. Todor, A. 2014. Analiza taxelor de mediu din România. In Analize de politici publice cu impact asupra mediului şi dezvoltării durabile. Bucureşti: Wolters Kluwer. Todor, A., and M. Chiper. 2014. Investițiile de mediu în România. In Analize de politici publice cu impact asupra mediului şi dezvoltării durabile. Bucureşti: Wolters Kluwer. Arpad Todor is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the  

88

A. Todor et al.

European level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within the CEU. He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor Oana Hroștea has a degree in environmental studies and sustainable development. She received her M.A. in ESSD from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in 2020 for a research paper based on the limited capacity to implement environmental taxes in Romania. Last year, Oana worked as an assistant in writing a sustainable development strategy for the City Hall of the 1st Sector in Bucharest and currently works as an analyst at an independent global provider of ESG and corporate governance research and ratings for investors.  

Maria Băran has a Bachelor in Psychology from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and currently studies MA Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA), Bucharest, Romania. In 2018 she participated in AIESEC Global Volunteer program EcoWorld in Malta, and since 2019 she is volunteering for Viitor Plus – an environment NGO.  

Robert Udrea holds a degree in environmental studies and sustainable development following an M.A. program at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA), Bucharest. Since 2020, he is a Ph.D. student in political sciences at NUPSPA, studying public policies for sustainable development at the national and European Union level. He worked as an assistant but also as an expert in the development of the Sustainable Development Strategy of Sector 1, Bucharest. Currently, he is part of the Romanian team in the Tipping+ project, funded by the European Commission.  

Chapter 6

The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax Oana Hroștea and Arpad Todor

Abstract  Once becoming a member of the European Union, Romania’s Constitution was modified to include the preeminence of the acquis, the modification fundamental for creating the common market, and imposing the same set of rules across the EU territory. As such, a national law that directly or indirectly generates discrimination among consumers or producers can be challenged in court. This chapter analyzes an environmental tax’s evolution whose introduction was motivated by industrial policy aims. The tax was dismantled by being repeatedly put down in the Romanian courts and by the European Court of Justice.  We show how the “first matriculation tax,” later transformed into the “pollution tax,” was a flawed policy from the beginning, as it was not designed to limit pollution by old car, but to stimulate the auto industry, and thus did not meet the standard of the acquis.

6.1  Introduction By signing the Accession Treaty and becoming a member of the European Union, Romania had an essential duty in applying a policy for vehicle taxation with a critical role in preventing air pollution, introducing restrictions to goods passing  the border from all around the EU, and adding an essential source of revenue. Following the EU accession, Government Emergency Ordinance no. 50/2008 enhanced the legislation to limit the pollutant emissions generated by cars’ usage. As shown in the previous chapter, the tax became the primary funding source for the Environmental Fund. The income was directed toward funding the program to stimulate the renewal of the National Car Park. We evaluate this policy’s success, considering the sustainability of the twin aims to avoid increasing the imports of second-hand cars and promoting the acquisition of new vehicles.

O. Hroștea · A. Todor (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_6

89

90

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

In this chapter, we analyze the effects of implementing the car registration fee in Romania. In the first place, we will discuss the legal framework of taxation and car taxation in the EU and the extent to which these types of fiscal policies are essential at a national and international level. Second, I will put an accent on the evolution of the car matriculation tax in Romania to evaluate the fact that it was a success or not. The tax, also known as the “first matriculation tax,” had been amended and repealed after only 1 year after being implemented due to being strongly contested by both the European Commission and Romanian courts. As a result, the tax was replaced with the “pollution tax,” regulated by GEO 50/2008, which added new values according to carbon dioxide emissions, cylinder capacity, and the year of manufacture of the car’s engine. As the years went by, the Romanian vehicle registration tax has been contested and amended almost every year because of it not competing with the EU regulations and, at the same time, being challenged by Romanian citizens. Declared “incompatible with Union law and judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union” in 2017, the tax was eliminated. All those who paid the tax could request to have their tax restituted (Calin 2010). The restitution of the tax process of the registration tax for cars is not finalized to date.

6.2  EU Taxation Policy on Cars One of the European Commission’s most critical environmental objectives is to improve air quality (European Comission 2016). According to the European Environment Agency, one of Europe’s most significant carbon emission sources is vehicles, where 27% of the total CO2 emissions are produced by cars, trucks, and vans (Transport and Environment 2018; Lazar 2007). As such, car taxation and fossil fuel taxation represent one of the most important instruments to include the real cost of pollution in the structure of users’ incentives. Under the Paris Agreement, the European Union took a commitment to set up some goals and targets that might positively impact climate change. In 2019 the Council and the European Parliament adopted a new regulation, imposing new CO2 emission targets. This new regulation has replaced the old policy adopted in 2009 and has a significant role in achieving the European Union’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. One of the benefits of this implementation could be a 23% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from road transportation (European Comission 2017). Taxation is the core tool for ensuring public spending, influencing the allocation of resources, stabilizing the economy, and, last but not least, helping the country’s economic growth (Stoilova and Patonov 2013). On the other hand, taxation plays an essential role in the Pillar Taxation Union member countries, considering that a country’s actions may negatively impact the neighboring countries, not just on itself. However, the European Union, at least in our days, has only a subsidiary role in taxation and the reason behind this is because EU wants to “ensure that they are

6  The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax

91

compatible not only with each other but also with the aims of the Treaty establishing the European Community” (Marinescu and Istrate 2009). Motor vehicle taxes are becoming an essential aspect of European Union policies. They interact with two major European issues: free movement and environmental protection, which seem to be in opposition to each other (Marinescu and Istrate 2009). Diminishing GHG outflows from the transport segment may be a critical need for the EU. Transport has not seen the same lessening in outflows as other segments. Street transport accounted for more than 70% of all GHG emanations within the part in 2015. Cars, which represent 44% of the transport segment’s outflows, were 16% over 1990 levels in 2005 (European Environment Agency 2018). Traveler transport requests, measured in passenger-kilometers, developed by 12% since 2000. An essential instrument for diminishing carbon dioxide (CO2) emanations from cars is the Regulation (EC) 443/2009 (European Parliament and the Council 2009). The Regulation set a 130 g CO2/km target by 2015 and 95 g CO2/km by 2021. At the same time, it helped vehicle producers to commit to realizing a normal CO2 emission execution for the vehicles they sell in Europe. The European Commission’s assessment study recommends that the CO2 control on cars is likely to have accounted for 65–85% of the diminishments in tailpipe outflows accomplished taking after its introduction. In 2018, the European Commission displayed a new authoritative proposition for new CO2 emanation measures for traveler cars and vans within the EU for the period after 2020 (European Environment Agency 2018). Owing to increasing fuel efficiency prompted by tightening EU regulations, regular CO2 emanations of modern passenger cars within the EU have fallen consistently in later years, from 170 g CO2/km in 2001 to 118 g CO2/km in 2016, with a yearly diminishment rate of 2%. A further 19.5% lessening in typical CO2 outflows will be required to comply with the 2021 target of 95 g CO2/km (27% underneath the 2015 target). There is a significant variation between nations regarding their regular CO2 emanations and the lessening rate seen over time. Portugal had the least expected CO2 outflows of the EU-28 countries in 2016 of 105 g/km, taken after by the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece, compared to the most noteworthy esteem of 134  g/km in Estonia, taken after by Lithuania. As respects, EEA part nations, the regular CO2 emanation of new cars was the most reduced in Norway (93 g/km), while the most noteworthy expected CO2 outflows were in Switzerland (134.0 g/km) (European Environment Agency). All in all, vehicle taxation can play an essential role in creating a more environmentally sustainable transport system, especially the overall car CO2 emissions and other pollutants. Nevertheless, its efficiency, predictability, and legal sustainability crucially depend on the careful balance of technical requirements and norms of applications to avoid generating discrimination among producers and users in the EU.

92

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

6.3  The Case Study of Romania As Romania joined the European Union, all of the custom duties and excises applied to the import of vehicles were eliminated and “replaced” with a “special tax for cars” (Parliament of Romania 2006). The special tax for cars was also labeled as the “first registration tax” because it was levied upon the first registration of a car in Romania (Lazar 2007). According to Law no. 343/2006, “cars and motor vehicles, including commercial vehicles, are subject to the special tax, except those specially equipped for the disabled.” The tax applied once when the car was to be used for the first time. The first registration tax has immediately produced public outrage, disputes, and criticism both nationally and internationally. Already March 2017, Romania received a request in the form of a “letter of summons” from the European Commission for changing the tax principles. According to the letter, the tax generated discrimination between second-hand vehicles imported from other member states, violating the EU Treaty. In the Romanian vehicle tax legislation from that time, the tax was much higher for the imported second-hand cars as it wasn’t considering the value of similar vehicles that were already registered in the country, violating Art. 90 of the EU Treaty. Furthermore, the Commission also considered that the tax system failed to consider aspects related to protecting the environment (Calin 2010). On the 21st of April 2008, a new Governmental Emergency Ordinance was issued to set up the pollution tax for motor vehicles (after this referred to as “GEO No. 50/2008”) (Government of Romania 2008). The regulation was justified through environmental protection by creating specific projects and programs to improve air quality, considering the adoption and importance of implementing consistent measures in particular with applicable community law. However, the abovementioned environmental continued to break the EU acquis, considering Article 25 of the TFEU stating that “between the Member States are prohibited import and export customs duties or charges having equivalent effect. This prohibition also applies to valid tax duties” (Calin 2010). The GEO 50/2008 has been attacked at the Romanian Constitutional Court in 2009 regarding the constitutionality of imposing a tax through an emergency ordinance (Constitutional Court of Romania 2009) and again in 2010 (Constitutional Court of Romania 2010) and 2011 (Constitutional Court of Romania 2011). A 2011 decision in the case brought forward by Nisipeanu showed that all the forms of the first matriculation tax were deemed illegal as they breached Article 110 of the TFEU by limiting the possibility to move second-hand cars from a country to another (Gorj Tribunal, Romania 2011). In 2013, the government of Romania renamed the first matriculation tax as an environmental stamp for motor vehicles and changed the method of calculation (Government of Romania 2013a, b). According to AFM, “the new environmental stamp will be an environmental tax because it is calculated mainly according to the CO2 emission (taken into account entirely for the stamp, compared to 30% in the law in force), written in the identity card of the car or approval documents” (Ministry

6  The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax

93

of Environment and Climate Change 2013). Unfortunately, instead of building on the lessons of the previous failures, the new policy was not adopted by law. Instead, it was adopted through a legal instrument that is constitutionally designed to respond to the emergency. The new ordinance was modified every year until the total abolition in 2017. Given that its formulations still did not meet all the requirements of the TFEU, as soon as it was adopted, a series of lawsuits were launched, and the Constitutional Court issued 12 decisions rejecting 12 unconstitutionality issues. Furthermore, in 2016, a ruling of the ECJ stated that Article 110 of the TFEU should be interpreted that the EU MS could impose a tax on new and second-hand motor vehicles upon first registration. Nevertheless, the article should be interpreted as “precluding that Member State from exempting from that tax vehicles already registered and in respect of which a tax previously in force but found to be incompatible with EU law has been paid and not repaid” (European Court of Justice 2016). The decision implied that treating the imported vehicles vs. those already registered differently created a competitive disadvantage. Thus, the environmental stamp was not, in its form, respecting Article 110 of the TFEU.  In 2017 the Romanian government issued the “Emergency Ordinance No. 52/2017 on Refunding the Special Vehicle and Motor Vehicle Fees, the Vehicle Pollution Tax and the Environmental Stamp for Motor Vehicles,” through which all particular taxpayers will benefit from a refund. The continuing modifications and readoption of the tax in forms that would be easily contestable and had would be contrary to TFEU could be considered a mystery unless we analyze these taxes’ effects on their revenues to the Environmental Fund. As we can all see in Table 6.1, there is a vast difference in the revenues collected through the first matriculation tax, even in the first 2 years after its implementation. In 2009 the revenues collected were almost half less than those collected in the previous year due to a new tax calculation formula. In 2012 we can see an increase in the revenues collected through the first registration fee since the European Court of Justice decided that the pollution tax is discriminatory, the government being forced to amend it. As a result, in May 2011, the Romanian authorities announced a new form of the tax, now called the auto tax, for cars registered in the country before 2007.

Table 6.1  Revenues and refund collected through the first matriculation tax/pollution tax/tax for pollution emissions for motor vehicles/environmental stamp in Romania (in millions of euro) 2008 2009 2011 Revenues 230.38 143.11 15.97 collected Refund – – 3.47 21.75% % refund of revenues

2012 51.72 18.00 34.80%

2013 152.56 6.92 4.53%

2014 148.66 25.65 17.25%

2015 119.68 0.76 0.63%

2016 118.01

2017 1.06

0.90 0.74 0.76% 70.11%

Source: The Administration of the Environmental Fund in Romania- https://afm.ro/main/informatii_publice/raport_anual_utilizare/raport_privind_utilizarea_fm_2011.pdf

94

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

Between 2013 and 2016, the Romanian Administration for the Environmental Fund has announced the following revenues collected through the auto tax: 732.325.750,22 lei in 2013; 713.578.602 lei in 2014; 574.472.178 lei in 2015; and 566.486.817,33 lei in 2016. As the “Emergency Ordinance No. 52/2017 on Refunding the Special Vehicle and Motor Vehicle Fees, the Vehicle Pollution Tax and the Environmental Stamp for Motor Vehicles (Government of Romania 2017), the revenues from the tax ave. become insignificant. Overall, Table 6.1 shows that even though most of the revenues should have been restituted, as they were declared illegally collected, by comparison, the amounts are much lower that indicates that the incentives of the government were positive.

6.4  T  he Evolution of Romania’s Matriculation Tax Through Time: Success or Failure? The introduction of the first matriculation tax right before Romania became a European Union member was also designed as a measure to protect Romania’s auto industry (Dacia owned by Renault Group and Ford) by increasing the cost of second-­hand cars and decreasing the cost of new ones through the “Scrappage” program. The tax constituted an income to the Environmental Fund budget and was managed by the Environmental Fund’s Administration to finance programs and projects for environmental protection. Legally, the first matriculation revenues should have financed various environmental protection and not only the renewal of the national car park. It was meant to finance programs to stimulate a national program to improve the environment’s quality by creating green spaces in localities and replacement or completion projects of the classic heating systems with systems that use solar energy, geothermal energy, and wind energy. It also was a source of funding for projects concerning the afforestation of degraded lands, projects for the construction of tracks for cyclists, and other similar ones. Nevertheless, as shown in the previous chapter, most of the revenues were focused on the S  – program to stimulate the National Car Park renewal, which used 36% of the total funds provided by the AFM from its start. The Rabla program stimulated the vehicle park’s renewal by granting a scrapping voucher that could be used to purchase new and less polluting vehicles. Table 6.2 shows the evolution through time of the Rabla program – the program to stimulate the renewal of the National Park in Romania. Data for the rest of the years shows that, in general, the number of vouchers offered for scrapping old vehicles has helped a relatively close number of new vehicles, and thus, it can indicate a general success of the policy along this dimension. Nevertheless, if we analyze data in Table 6.3, summarizing Romania’s evolution of the national vehicle park, the picture looks bleaker. While in 2007, the total number of registered cars was 3,554,404, in 2019, the number doubled in size, reaching 6,901,536 registered cars. The number of cars registered in Romania had increased continuously since 2007 when its first registration tax was applied.

Source: The Administration of the Environmental Fund in Romania

Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Used vehicles thrown destroyed 16,444 30,466 32,327 186,854 112,016 44,857 19,846 20,391 25,423 25,905 28,366 46,626 52,588 New financed vehicles – – – Approx. 60,000 120,000 15,149 13,465 20,391 25,420 18,962 24,960 39,285 62,316

Table 6.2  Evolution of the Rabla program: category S – the program to stimulate the renewal of the National Park

6  The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax 95

96

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

Table 6.3  The evolution of the National Car Park in Romania Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

The evolution per year of the National Car Park in Romania 0–2 years 2–5 years 5–10 years >10 years 10–20 579,807 573,970 702,380 1,698,247 – 619,396 736,290 852,471 1,819,210 – 415,186 887,259 987,984 1,954,493 – 213,442 932,165 1,163,211 2,010,883 – 177,406 770,028 1,227,161 2,159,952 – 149,327 543,942 1,398,513 2,395,469 – 124,550 338,646 1,542,966 2,689,498 – 126,812 293,377 1,480,416 3,006,959 – 148,726 258,683 1,327,374 3,420,276 – 174,409 244,667 1,172,523 3,880,824 – 200,643 255,017 970,076 4,572,458 – 235,704 302,857 796,395 – 3,739,255 289,520 348,304 790,610 – 3,951,882

>20 – – – – – – – – – – – 1,378,325 1,520,920

Total 3,554,404 4,027,367 4,244,922 4,319,701 4,334,547 4,487,251 4,695,660 4,907,564 5,155,059 5,472,423 5,998,194 6,452,536 6,901,236

Source: Tempo Online http://statistici.insse.ro/ and The Directorate of driving licenses and vehicle registration

When we consider the age of the registered car, we can see that there is a much higher rate of older cars being registered, while the number of new or almost new cars is very low in comparison. There is a constant tendency for Romanian citizens to purchase older cars than new ones, as shown in the table above. We can see that, for example, in 2008, there were some 619,396 new or almost new cars registered, 736,290 cars aged between 2 and 3 years, 852,471 with age between 5 and 10 years, and 1,819,210 with the age of 10 years or more. As the years went by, the number of older registered cars increased. For example, if in 2009, 1,954,493 of cars registered are 10 years or older, by 2017, the number reached 4,572,458. The number has continuously increased in all the age groups, while the new or almost new cars registered were the lowest. When considering the vehicles registered according to the type of fuel (Table 6.4), we can see that most of them are cars that consume either gasoline or diesel. Instead, the less polluting type of cars like LPG, natural gas, or electric represent under 1% of the total registered cars by 2017. Overall, the evolutions indicated in Tables 6.3 and 6.4 show that the first matriculation tax’s overall effects on the car park’s average age had been minimal, at best. While the total number of registered cars in Romania has doubled since the EU accession, and Romania’s GDP/capita increased by 50%, the number of new cars in circulation has dramatically decreased in absolute and percentual terms. Romania’s failure to implement a first matriculation tax that would achieve its aim to reduce pollution by decreasing the car park’s average can be explained by its limited capacity to design and implement environmental taxes. Romania’s tax system has continuously been one of the worst-performing tax systems in EU countries, with high tax evasion levels. The country’s low fiscal capabilities on taxes had been triggered by both the instabilities and low quality of the legal framework and the lack of political debate regarding fiscal problems (Todor 2018).

2008 2,901,173 1,125,664 439 10

78 3

Year 2007 2672,723 881,517 114 7

40 3

113 1

2009 3,009,053 1,235,113 629 13

Source: Tempo Online http://statistici.insse.ro/

Types of fuel Gasoline Diesel Electric Liquefied petroleum gas Natural gas Other sources 166 1

2010 2,990,858 1,327,836 812 28

Table 6.4  Cars registered according to the type of fuel per year

213 20

2011 2,952,375 1,380,805 1077 57 288 4

2012 3,005,229 1,480,137 1472 121 384 7

2013 3,086,276 1,606,356 2042 595 512 8

2014 3,161,031 1,741,719 2737 1557 753 8

2015 3,241,746 1,906,195 3863 2494

1144 9

2016 3,340,914 2,120,151 6348 3857

1556 1

2017 3,465,038 2,516,380 9947 5272

1.922 6

2018 3.535.317 2.891.140 16.536 7.615

98

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

6.5  Conclusion All in all, while the average age of the national car park has a strong effect on each country’s capacity to comply with the acquis on atmospheric pollution, the taxes applied on cars are not considered an environmental tax policy. During its 10 years of existence, the first registration fee has changed almost every year, producing a real scandal, disputes, and criticism both nationally and internationally. Two main reasons have led to this phenomenon. One of the reasons that triggered this issue was that Romanian citizens were not satisfied with it. Even though the Romanian government tried for 10 years to find a calculation formula that would satisfy both the EU acquis and the Romanian citizens, it eliminated the tax. All in all, we can conclude that the first registration tax was not a success in this country. Buleancea argues that the first matriculation tax has generated a dispute that has not been encountered so far in the history of the administrative bodies and courts involved: “from requests for refund of paid taxes, requests for obliging the competent bodies to register without payment of the tax, requests for payment of interest (“legal” or tax) applied to the amount to be repaid by way of tax or the difference of interest, and requests for cancellation of the registration/transcript of the property right and cancellation of payment receipts as false” (Bulancea 2015). While the Constitutional Court of Romania has repeatedly rejected various unconstitutionality objections to the various legislative acts codifying the tax, the ECJ has found continuously it uncomplying with the TFEU. The Romanian government’s incapacity did not cause these rulings to foreseen the effect of a very complex EU regulation. Instead, from the beginning, it was relatively straightforward that within the form that it was adopted, the first matriculation tax would breach Article 110 of the TFEU. Instead, the continuous readaptation of the policy, informs that would aim at the same end effect, indicates a strong preference by the Romanian government to maintain a tool that would limit the import of second-hand cars from the EU detriment of the domestic car industry. Instead, domestic private actors’ determination to continuously attach the legality of the tax in the national courts and the reference to the ECJ for the interpretation of the tax has proven a powerful mechanism of monitoring of acquis compliance.

References Bulancea, D.M. 2015. De ce nu trebuie sa restituim timbrul de mediu? Romanian Case Law Review/Revista Romana de Jurisprudenta. Calin, D. 2010. Jurisprudential analysis regarding the special first registration tax and the pollution tax. Revista Forumul Judecatorilor. Constitutional Court of Romania. 2009. Decizia nr. 586/2009 referitoare la respingerea excepției de neconstituționalitate a dispozițiilor art. 1 din Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 50/2008 pentru instituirea taxei pe poluare pentru autovehicule (Decision no. 586/2009 regarding the rejection of the exception of unconstitutionality of the provisions of art. 1 of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 50/2008 for the establishment of the pollution tax for motor vehicles).

6  The Evolution of the First Matriculation Tax

99

———. 2010. Decizia nr. 1160/2010 referitoare la respingerea excepției de neconstituționalitate a dispozițiilor art. 1 și art. 3 alin. (1) din Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 50/2008 pentru instituirea taxei pe poluare pentru autovehicule (Decision no. 1160/2010 regarding the rejection of the exception of unconstitutionality of the provisions of art. 1 and art. 3 para. (1) of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 50/2008 for the establishment of the pollution tax for motor vehicles). ———. 2011. Decizia nr. 669/2011 referitoare la respingerea excepției de neconstituționalitate a prevederilor art. 1 și art. 3 din Ordonanța de urgență a Guvernului nr. 50/2008 pentru instituirea taxei pe poluare pentru autovehicule (Decision no. 669/2011 regarding the rejection of the exception of unconstitutionality of the provisions of art. 1 and art. 3 of the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 50/2008 for the establishment of the pollution tax for motor vehicles). European Comission. 2016. Environmental aspects of the automotive industry. In Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs  – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/ sectors/automotive/environment-­protection_en. Accessed 27 Oct 2020. ———. 2017. CO2 emission performance standards for cars and vans (2020 onwards). In Climate Action – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/regulation_en. Accessed 27 Oct 2020. European Commision CO2 emission performance standards for cars and vans (2020 onwards). European Court of Justice. 2016. EUR-Lex  – 62014CA0586 Judgment of the Court (Ninth Chamber) of 9 June 2016 (request for a preliminary ruling from the Curtea de Apel Cluj — Romania))  — Vasile Budișan v Administrația Județeană a Finanțelor Publice Cluj. https:// eur-­lex.europa.eu/legal-­content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62014CA0586. Accessed 27 Oct 2020. European Environment Agency. 2018. Appropriate taxes and incentives do affect purchases of new cars. European Parliament and the Council. 2009. Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 setting emission performance standards for new passenger cars as part of the Community’s integrated approach to reduce CO 2 emissions from light-duty vehicles (Text with EEA relevance). Gorj Tribunal, Romania. 2011. EUR-Lex – 62010CJ0263. https://eur-­lex.europa.eu/legal-­content/ EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:62010CJ0263. Accessed 27 Oct 2020. Government of Romania. 2008. OUG 50/2008 pentru instituirea taxei pe poluare pentru autovehicule (GEO 50 21/04/2008 for the establishment of the pollution tax for motor vehicles). ———. 2013a. OUG nr. 9/2013 privind timbrul de mediu pentru autovehicule (GEO no. 9/2013 on the environmental stamp for motor vehicles). ———. 2013b. NATIONAL ACTIONPLAN for mitigating the risks related to the use of plant protection products. ———. 2017. OUG nr.52 din 4 august 2017 privind restituirea sumelor reprezentând taxa specială pentru autoturisme şi autovehicule, taxa pe poluare pentru autovehicule, taxa pentru emisiile poluante provenite de la autovehicule şi timbrul de mediu pentru autovehicule (EMERGENCY ORDINANCE no. 52 of August 4, 2017 on the repayment of sums representing the special tax on cars and motor vehicles, the pollution tax on motor vehicles, the tax on polluting emissions from motor vehicles and the environmental stamp on motor vehicles). Lazar, S. 2007. Registration taxes on vehicles: Evolutions and trends in the European Union and Romania. Analele Universității de Ştiințe Economice din Oradea. Marinescu, N., and I. Istrate. 2009. Car taxation in the European Union: The case of Romania. International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3: 83–94. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. 2013. Environmental stamp. Useful information guide. Parliament of Romania. 2006. Law no. 343/2006 of July 17, 2006 for amending and completing Law no. 571/2003. Stoilova, D., and N. Patonov. 2013. An empirical evidence for the impact of taxation on economy growth in the European Union. Tourism & Management Studies: 1031–1039.

100

O. Hroștea and A. Todor

Todor, A. 2018. Willing to Pay? The Politics of Engendering Faith in the Post-Communist Romanian Tax System. In The Leap of Faith The Fiscal Foundations of Successful Government in Europe and America, 250–270. Transport & Environment. 2018. CO2 EMISSIONS FROM CARS: The facts Government Emergency Ordinance No. 50/2008. Oana Hroștea has a degree in environmental studies and sustainable development. She received her M.A. in ESSD from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in 2020 for a research paper based on the limited capacity to implement environmental taxes in Romania. Last year, Oana worked as an assistant in writing a sustainable development strategy for the City Hall of the 1st Sector in Bucharest and currently works as an analyst at an independent global provider of ESG and corporate governance research and ratings for investors.  

Arpad Todor is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within the CEU.  He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor  

Chapter 7

Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More Harm than Good Alina Bilan

Abstract  Green public procurement (GPP) is an internationally acknowledged environmental policy tool, although its scale is different depending on the country. Meanwhile, states seeking to buy products, services, and works randomly, and its application are instead the effect of the environmental legislation changes. Although Romania is the only country in Europe with a dedicated law on GPP, it has neither a national action plan for GPP nor a monitoring system in place. Nevertheless, there are no studies that scrutinized the reasons for the lag behind. The present study examines the evolution of the GPP public policy in Romania, the effects of the GPP law on using environmental criteria in tenders, and measures the GPP uptake to assess the policy success or failure. The analysis concludes that there was only an approximately 10% progress in GPP uptake in the last 10 years, making this policy more a failure than a success, caused by unclear legislation and flawed design policy and implementation.

7.1  Introduction Public purchasing represents approximately 12% of GDP in OECD countries (OECD 2017) and around 19% of EU GDP, which is approximately 2.3 trillion euro (European Commission 2017a). The massive amount of goods, services, and works purchased by governments have a considerable environmental impact on CO2 emissions (Hasanbeigi et al. 2019) and, consequently, a financial effect triggering consumption and production that are not sustainable (O’Rourke et  al. 2013). This impact can be mitigated if the public authorities use their purchasing power to buy environmentally friendly goods, services, and works, thus stimulating innovation

A. Bilan (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_7

101

102

A. Bilan

(Tukker et al. 2008; Bauer 2009) and influencing the production cycle. Ever since the 1992 UN “Conference on Environment and Development,” many countries have adhered to the goal of supporting and achieving sustainable development. At the international (United Nations Environment Programme 2012) and EU level (Commission 2001), the green public procurements have been acknowledged and promoted as an important environmental policy instrument (European Commission 2012) and one of the paths to achieve sustainable development (OECD 2002; COM (2016) 739 final 2016). Although so far, GPP has been a voluntary instrument and most of the acquis (comprised in the EU soft law) specifies that the contracting authorities should use green consideration in their purchasing, in the context of the new EU strategy aiming to be climate-neutral by 2050, the Commission will propose further legislation and guidance on green public purchasing (European Commission 2019a) and minimum mandatory green public procurement criteria and targets concerning renewable energy. Although in 2003 the EU Commission recommended to the member states to adopt national action plans (NAP) for greening their public procurements by the end of 2006 (European Commission 2003), Romania lagged behind the rest of Europe on this subject, being one of the five last member states without a NAP. The present study examines the evolution of green public procurement policy in Romania and whether the contracting authorities strategically use environmental considerations in the tender procedures. Starting from statistical data and studies commissioned by the European Commission in 2010 that contain data concerning the uptake of GPP in Romania, we tried to check if one can determine the actual level of GPP application in this country 10 years later for assessing if the GPP policy was successful. The success of the policy is defined based on programmatic assessment and process assessment. In operational terms, Romania’s GPP policy is more a failure than a success. In the last 10 years, the GPP uptake progressed only with approximately 10% and did not touch the projected target of 50% set by the EU Commission. Although with overly ambitious goals declared when adopted, the GPP law actually prevents a broader commitment for GPP. Furthermore, the lack of a monitoring system and of a national action plan for green public procurement and the absence of the public managers’ commitment to mainstream GPP transform the inclusion of environmental criteria in tenders into isolated cases.

7.2  T  he History and Evolution of the GPP Provisions in the EU Although its position as an environmental policy tool was acknowledged since 1992 by the OECD, this section underlines how GPP became more critical as the problem of climate change became more stringent. The European Commission began to emphasize sustainable public procurements, providing the possibility to include environmental criteria in tenders in the public procurement directives. Although

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

103

nowhere in the Treaty we can find an express reference to green public procurement, the EU acquis generates Romania’s and other member states’ obligations concerning public procurement and sustainable development. The TFEU rules GPP, being part of public purchasing, the public procurement directives, and the national laws regarding compliance with the principles of transparency, proportionality, equal treatment, mutual recognition, and nondiscrimination. Nevertheless, it is still a voluntary instrument in most EU member states. Only the EU and national environmental legislation directly impact procurement procedures in some cases (European Commission 2019b), making some green requirements mandatory. Studies (Bauer 2009), academics (Tukker et  al. 2008), international organizations (OECD 2002; United Nations Environment Programme 2012), and the European Commission (European Commission 2008a) have continuously stressed the benefits of GPP for the environment, innovation, and new markets. Before adopting the public procurement directives from 2004, basing the award of a public contract on environmental criteria was a topic of great academic debates at the European level (Burgi 2010). The reserve was that such awarding criteria would distort competition (Thomson and Jackson 2007) and advantage some economic operators (Günther and Scheibe 2006). Relying on the ECJ’s rulings,1 the European Commission shed some light in 2001 clarifying that environmental protection or performance conditions could be used as a criterion for awarding a contract (European Commission 2001). The environmental criterion was allowed, but the ECJ has ruled (European Court of Justice 2002) that the chosen criteria for awarding the public contract must be linked to the contract’s subject matter. In the optics of 2004 Directives and the ECJ, the environmental and social considerations were seen as secondary in opposition with the best value for money objective. Still, later on, the European Commission’s view began to change (European Commission 2010a) once with the international trend (Witjes and Lozano 2016) in the sense that it began to put a greater emphasis on sustainable public procurements. In 2004, the European legal framework for public procurement2 provided that the public purchasers could include environmental and social considerations3 in their procurement procedures (as technical specifications, qualification, or award criteria and as a subject matter of the public contract) (Caranta et  al. 2013). Directive 1  Judgment of the Court (Fourth Chamber) of 20 September 1988. – Gebroeders Beentjes BV v State of the Netherlands.  – Reference for a preliminary ruling: Arrondissementsrechtbank’ s-Gravenhage – Netherlands. – Procedure for the award of public works contracts. – Case 31/87 and Case C-255/98, Commission of the European Communities v. the French Republic, judgment of 26.9.2000, School buildings Nord-Pas-de-Calais Region (ECR 2000, I-7445) 2  Directive 2004/17/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 31, 2004, coordinating the procurement procedures of entities operating in the water, energy, transport, and postal services sectors, and Directive 2004/18/EC 18 of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 31, 2004, on the coordination of procedures for the award of public work contracts, public supply contracts, and public service contracts 3  Although possible to be included in the tender documentation, the environmental and social considerations were considered of secondary importance the light being shed on the importance of compliance with the best value for money principle and with the principles of the internal market.

104

A. Bilan

2014/24/EU on public procurement and Directive 2014/25/EU on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport, and postal services sectors that replaced the old public procurement directives address the problem of protecting the environment through public purchasing. The importance of the GPP application was repeatedly highlighted by the EU Commission in 2010 (European Commission 2010b), in its Communication in 2017 (European Commission 2017b), and in the Reflection Paper launched in 2019 (Directorate-General for Communication (European Commission) 2019). Recently, the European Green Deal4 emphasizes that public authorities, including the EU institutions, should lead by example to ensure that their procurement is green (European Commission 2019a).

7.3  The Evolution of GPP Policy in Romania According to some Romanian scientists (Burja and Burja 2009), ever since 1970–1980, Romania was interested in the impact of economic development on the environment. Still, political decisions and legislative initiatives were made, in fact, after the Communist period’s fall. The concept of green public procurements is closely related to sustainable development (European Commission 2016). Although greening the available purchasing in Romania was not a target of the public policies before the fall of the communist regime, after 1989, Romania adopted its strategy for sustainable development. The first Romanian national sustainable development strategy was adopted in 1999 (Romanian Department for Sustainable Development 2018) with the assistance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (Ministry of Environment 2018), and later, in 2001, Romania was the first country that ratified the Kyoto Protocol (Parlament of Romania 2001). As reported by the National Strategy for Sustainable Development of Romania 2030, although Romania had ratified the UN sustainable development-related documents, the concept’s acceptance was rather declarative. Only with the negotiations for the EU’s accession, sustainable development has become an intrinsic part of Romania’s legal and institutional structure. After joining the EU, the national strategy for sustainable development was revised, updated, and adopted by Government Decision No. 1460/2008 (Romanian Government 2008). The legal frame regarding public procurements in Romania before the EU accession5 did not refer to environmental or social considerations used in the tender documents (Dragoş et al. 2010a). As a result of the negotiations for EU accession, the 4  The Commission will propose further legislation and guidance on green public purchasing. To support the EU’s ecological transition, the EU’s trade policy will further facilitate the trade and investment in green goods and services and promote climate-friendly public procurement. 5  Government Emergency Ordinance no. 60/2001 regarding the public procurements, the public goods concession contracts regime (Law no. 219/1998), and Government Ordinance no. 20/2002 concerning the electronic public procurement system and public-private partnership contracts regulated by the Government Ordinance no. 16/2002

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

105

Romanian G.E.O. no. 34/2006 transposed most, if not all, of the provisions of public procurement directives from 2004. In 2015–2016, critical changes took place in the Romanian public procurement legislation due to the Partnership Agreement Romania 2014RO16M8PA001.1.2 for 2014–2020 between the Romanian government and the EU Commission. It covered five European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) (European Commission 2014). The agreement required the Romanian government to adopt a national strategy on public procurements, to transpose in the Romanian law the new public procurement Directives from 2014, and to “increase the use of green procurements” (European Commission 2014). Thus, on May 26, 2016, Romania transposed the new European public procurement rules in Law no. 98/2016 on public procurement, in Law no. 99/2016 on sectorial procurement, and in Law no. 100/2016 on the concessions, which provided the possibility to use environmental considerations in the tender documentation (2016a, b, c). Surprisingly and, seemingly as a result of a parallel legislative process, 1 day after, on May 27, 2016, comes into force Law no. 69/2016 regarding the green public procurements (GPP law). Romania is the only country from the EU that chose to adopt a special law dedicated to GPP. At first sight, this law represents a significant initiative to combat the massive depletion of nonrenewable resources and a crucial environmental policy. If perused more closely, it could be labeled as one of the obstacles preventing a broader uptake of GPP in Romania. The law’s text mentions very ambitious objectives: promoting environmental protection and sustainable development, promoting sustainable consumption and production, encouraging the development and implementation of clean and environmentally friendly technologies, promoting social progress, ensuring the efficiency of the public funds, improvement of the service quality and cost optimization, and development of the internal market for green products, services, works, and technologies. Since the GPP law’s adoption until 2018, no notable action has been taken to apply the law or enhance the awareness of the importance of GPP. At the end of 2018, a GPP Guide6 (Order no. 1068/1652/2018) was adopted by the Ministry of Environment Waters and Forests due to an essential European project called GPP Stream.7 This GPP Guide transposed the ecological minimum technical 6  Order no. 1068/1652/2018 comprising the minimum criteria for the environment protection for a certain category of goods and services required within the tender book 7  The Ministry of Environment Waters and Forests and the Nord East Regional Development Agency from Romania are partners in an important European project called GPP Stream that generated the Guide’s creation. The project aims “to improve the management, implementation, and monitoring of policy instruments that integrate GPP approaches to ensure that resource efficiency gains can be maximized and that resource efficiency objectives are institutionalized through GPP.” The project is coordinated by Region Friuli and is implemented in partnership with eight Bulgarian, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian bodies with complementary environmental and GPP expertise. According to the official website of the project, the outcomes will be 5 transnational learning events, at least 300 stakeholders involved, 13 GPP webinars, and 5 GPP toolkits, and 1 online platform and 8 policy instruments from 5 EU countries will integrate GPP approaches; 40 EU policy instrument managing authorities apply GPP-STREAM toolkits.

106

A. Bilan

requirements provided in the GPP EU criteria8 but only for six types of goods and services (cleaning products and services, computers and monitors, copying and graphic paper, food, catering services, furniture, light-duty vehicles).9 This limited number of goods and services seems relatively low, considering that other sectors generate a larger CO2 footprint, like the construction field (Kozik and Karasińska – Jaśkowiec 2016) or the textile industry. The GPP Guide is mandatory for all contracting authorities and entities from Romania. Starting with November 12, 2018, all public tenders published in the Electronic System for Public Procurement (ESPP) must comply with its rules for the six groups of products and services. Including these minimum environmental requirements in technical specifications makes them a “must-have” under the sanction of excluding noncompliant tenders. Simultaneously, their inclusion in the contract award phase, as a preferential element with a specific weighing, is left to the contracting authority’s decision. Although we have in place, theoretically, enough European soft law and national legislation relating to the green public procurements, the uptake of green purchasing  at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/eu_gpp_criteria_en.htm- accessed on June 15, 2019  The Order no. 1068/1652/2018 for the approval of the Green Procurement Guide that sets forth the minimum requirements regarding environmental protection for six groups of products and services: 1. Copy paper and graphic paper – requirements: (i) the paper must be made from fibers of recovered paper, paper recycled, or based on raw fibers, 75% – 100%; (ii) paper does not contain elemental chlorine – “elementary chlorine-free.” 2. Transportation vehicles – requirements: (i) carbon dioxide – CO2 emissions and the pollution norm. 3. New interior and exterior furniture renovation/reconditioning and collection and reuse services a stock of furniture at the end of its life cycle: 3.1. New indoor and outdoor furniture – requirements: (i) legality of the source of origin of the wood; (ii) formaldehyde emissions from wood panels; (iii) list of REACH candidate substances; (iv) suitability for use; (v) design for disassembly and repair; and (vi) product warranty and spare parts 3.2. Reconditioning services and furniture collection – requirements: (i) furniture renovation/ reconditioning; (ii) the guarantee of the renovated furniture product 3.3. Services for collecting and reusing the stock of furniture at the end life cycle – requirements: (i) collection and reuse of existing furniture stock 4. Cleaning products and services: 4.1. Cleaning products (universal detergents; detergents for sanitary installations; window cleaners; detergents and rinsing products for dishwashers; dishwashers for handwashing; laundry detergents and stain removers before washing machines) – requirements: (i) labeling; (ii) packing and dosing 4.2. Cleaning services – requirements: (i) the cleaning products used in the provision of cleaning services; 5. Food and catering services: 5.1 Food – requirements: (i) percentage of products obtained from organic productions; (ii) packing materials; (iii) labeling, packaging, and delivery 5.2. Catering services – requirements: (i) percentage of products obtained from organic productions; (ii) packing materials; (iii) reducing the generation of waste from packaging 6. Office IT equipment – requirements: (i) energy performance; (ii) extension of product life; (iii) disposal management (recycling of components and marking plastic cases, supports, and frames); (iv) use of hazardous substances 8 9

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

107

seems relatively low in Romania than other European countries (Witjes and Lozano 2016).

7.4  The Effects of GPP Policy Implementation in Romania When it comes to assessing the success or failure of the GPP policy in Romania, success is defined based on programmatic and process assessment (Compton and Hart 2019), that is, if the policy goals were achieved, “how the processes of policy design, decision-making, and delivery are managed”(Compton and Hart 2019) and whether these processes contribute to the effectiveness and efficiency of the policy. In operational terms, the GPP policy’s success in Romania is represented by the progress of GPP utilization from below 20% (registered in 2010) to the 50% threshold targeted in the EU GPP policy. Unfortunately, there are no direct instruments currently in force that can provide an accurate level of GPP in Romania. First measurements for the GPP uptake in Romania can be found in two reports commissioned by the European Commission: a report10 conducted in 2010 by Adelphi and Belmont in collaboration with München University (Adelphi report) and a study conducted by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). The study was conducted among the 27 member states contracting authorities, analyzing if the target of 50% GPP of all tendering procedures set by the European Commission (European Commission 2008a) for the year 2010 was achieved (CEPS study). According to the Adelphi report, Romania, like other countries in Europe, declared its purpose to implement a national action plan (NAP) for GPP and to set targets for eight priority-specific product groups more than 10 years ago. These targets were less ambitious than the ones in Western Europe. According to the authors, Romania also had limited systems to monitor the corresponding shares of GPP at that time (Kahlenborn et al. 2011). Adelphi’s report mentions that between 30 and 40% of the Romanian authorities incorporated GPP requirements between 50% and 100% of their contracts. Thus, Romania ranked the fifth among the 21 countries covered by the study. However, this study cautions that for Romania, the survey results show an unrealistic positive picture. The responses do not match the desk research results and, therefore, might have been biased (Kahlenborn et al. 2011). CPES study encompasses data collected from Romania (Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) 2012) and reveals that Romania featured in 2011 a level of EU GPP uptake below 20%. Although the results are less optimistic than those from the Adelphi study, the data seem closer to Romania’s socioeconomic reality. The same report indicates that Romanian authorities’ use of life-cycle cost LCC or the total cost of ownership awarding criteria was minimal. The results structured

 Strategic Use of Public Procurement in Europe  – Final Report to the European Commission MARKT/2010/02/C.

10

108

A. Bilan

responses received by 17 public authorities at different levels of government in Romania by making three types of inquiries: (i) on their general green procurement practices, (ii) on GPP criteria included in the last contract signed for ten product groups (cleaning products and services, construction, electricity, catering services and food products, gardening services and products, office IT equipment, copying and graphic paper, textiles, transport, and furniture), and (iii) on the share of green contracts signed for each product group in 2009 and 2010, both in terms of number and overall value (Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) 2012). According to the study’s elaborators, in the 31 contracts belonging to the sample, Romanian authorities used green criteria in 26% of the cases. Thus, the conclusion was that this result was the third lowest value in the EU. Other findings were that 59% of the 17 Romanian respondents mentioned that their organization includes an environmental component in its procurement policy but not always, while 24% declared that it often includes “green” requirements. In comparison, for 53% of the respondents, this rarely occurs, and for 24% of the respondents, “green” requirements are never included (Fig. 7.1). Finally, the last result concerns the evaluation criteria to award a contract, and 88% out of the 17 contracting authorities reported they evaluate proposals mostly based on purchasing costs – the highest in the EU. For this chapter, I have conducted a survey, between June 2019 and January 2020, among 17 Romanian large contracting authorities at different government levels (local authorities, central authorities, ministries, state-owned companies, airports) to verify the uptake of GPP. I excluded several public entities from the survey: the Ministry of Environment, Waters, Forests; the National Environmental Guard; and the North-East Regional Development Agency. The exclusion criteria were that they are the beneficiaries of several pieces of training on green public procurement. They usually use environmental criteria in their tenders, and their responses could

Fig. 7.1  CEPS study results for Romania. (Reproduced from Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) 2012)

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

109

have altered the results.11 According to the responses received, 2 out of 17 respondents responsible for the contracting authorities’ tendering procedures declared they were not familiar with the GPP concept. In contrast, four others were vaguely familiar with the idea. Six respondents out of 17 have utilized environmental considerations regarding technical specifications, while 3 out of 17 respondents used environmental requirements as award criteria in the tender documentation. Nine out of 17 respondents do not use or are not aware of using green considerations in their tender procedures. The most utilized source the respondents have consulted for setting environmental requirements was the GPP Guide (Fig. 7.2). The share of award procedures containing environmental requirements from the total public procurements organized in a year by each respondent was predominantly between 5% and 20% (Fig. 7.3). Fig. 7.2 Sources consulted for setting environmental criteria in tenders

0% Order no 1068/1652/2018 (GPP Guide)

4 36%

GPP criteria set by European Commission https://ec.europa.eu /environment/gpp /eu_gpp_criteria_en.htm

5 36%

2 18%

Fig. 7.3  The share of GPP out of the total procurements organized in a year by the contracting authority questioned

Wproducers'websites

> 50% 40% - 50 % 30 % - 40 % 20 - 30% 10% - 20% 5% - 10 % 1% - 5 % 0-1%

1 0 0 1 1 1 3 0 0

1

2

3

4

 Until January 2020, pieces of training on GPP were available solely for a small group of public officers from NAPP, the Ministry of Environment, the National Environment Guard, and the N-E Regional Development Agency; therefore, this author has considered that responses received from these public authorities cannot mirror an image of the GPP uptake in Romania that is close to reality.

11

110

A. Bilan

Fig. 7.4 Management’s initiative for applying GPP

8 4

yes

No

Fig. 7.5  Copying paper public procurements published between November 18, 2018, and April 24, 2020

Only one respondent (the 18th interviewed contracting authority) declared that the share of GPP out of the total public procurements organized in 1 year was more than 50%. Still, this respondent has a distinctive characteristic of being a centralized procurement body, and therefore, it was not included in the chart. The survey revealed that only 1 respondent out of 17 organizes green public procurements yearly, and 8 respondents set environmental criteria in public tenders only occasionally. In contrast, the rest of the survey participants declared that they do not use green public procurements. Eleven respondents out of 17 participants reported that they have not been asked or required by the management or hierarchical officers to include environmental consideration in the tenders. One respondent did not answer (Fig. 7.4). Only 20% of the respondents went to their superiors to propose environmental requirements in the tender books or as award criteria. They argued that they have not thought to do it either they believe it is inopportune or their opinion does not count. Most respondents with leading positions stated their openness to using environmental considerations in the technical specifications or award criteria.

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

111

I also analyzed tender procedures for purchasing copying and graphic paper, which were published in the ESPP for the period November 18, 2018–April 24, 2020, for verifying the compliance with the provisions of Order no. 1068/2018 for the approval of the GPP Guide. The analysis reveals that that out of 105 tenders, 76 were noncompliant with the GPP Guide (72%), and 23 tenders were compliant with the GPP Guide (22%), while 6 tenders were partially compliant (6%)12 (Fig. 7.5). This verification shows that only 1,258 out of 20,704 Romanian contracting authorities13 purchased ecological copying and graphic paper using public tender and simplified tender in the period November 18, 2018–April 24, 2020. Out of 1258 contracting authorities, one is a centralized public procurement body (National Office for Centralized Public Procurements) that purchased copying paper for 1153 public entities. It is essential to mention that the analysis result is approximate. It cannot measure the real figures for purchasing ecological paper in the mentioned period because only 105 public tenders could be verified in the ESPP. If another public purchasing for copying paper was done in the scrutinized period, it was accomplished through direct procurements (whose values do not exceed the equivalent of 30,000 euro). Thus, the tender books are not public to check if ecological criteria were observed. Besides the presented data, this research encountered real difficulty in collecting statistical information regarding the uptake of GPP in Romania since elaborating the CEPS Study in 2010. According to a study drawn up in 2010 (Dragoş et  al. 2010b), the Romanian contracting authorities did not include very frequently environmental and social considerations in tenders. The reason was that the public entities considered that they created technical and legal complications and increased the costs. The utilization of the life cycling cost or total cost of ownership as evaluation criteria to award the contract may be indicators of green considerations’ utilization. For this reason, I checked if the percentage of MEAT awarding criteria (most economically advantageous tender) can be calculated by way of checking statistical reports from NAPP. According to a statistical report prepared by NAPP, most contracts concluded in 2008 by the public authorities were awarded based on the lowest price criteria. Only 14.7% of public contracts were awarded based on the most economically advantageous tender in 2018, but this does not signify that all these tenders were green (Table 7.1). The share of GPP out of these tenders could have been measured if there were any statistical data available concerning the evaluation factors contained in the best price-quality ratio awarding criteria. While the utilization of the lowest price awarding criteria has not lowered significantly from 1 year to another (95% in 2016, 92.25% in 2017, and 85.22% in 2018), a slight change in the contracting authorities’ behavior was noticed, explained by the fact that they started to choose other awarding criteria besides the lowest price

 http://sicap-prod.e-licitatie.ro/  This is the total number of registered contracting authorities in the Electronic System for Public Procurement (SEAP).

12 13

112 Table 7.1  The percentage of MEAT awarding criteria in 2018 (information retrieved from a Statistical Report issued by NAPP for the year 2018 – the monitoring indices for public procurements’ efficiency concluded by contract in 2018)

A. Bilan Awarding criteria Best cost-quality ratio Best price-quality ratio Lowest cost Lowest price

Number of tenders 51 2691 14 15,887

slowly. The conclusion drawn from the analyzed data is that in 2020, Romania’s GPP utilization level comprises 20–25%, only a 10% increase being registered from 2010. Thus, the GPP policy failed its purpose.

7.5  What Factors Explain GPP Policy Failure? The main theories that explain the failure/success of an EU public policy point out several factors  – the complexity of EU directives (in this particular case of GPP policy, the complexity of the EU soft law on GPP and instruments) (Kaeding 2008; Toshkov 2008) and the national monitoring and enforcement (Tallberg 2002) – and political and administrative factors like the goodness-of-fit (Angelova et al. 2012), the “actors” policy preferences (Toshkov 2010), the “administrative efficiency” (Mbaye 2001; Berglund et al. 2006), and the number of veto players that measure institutional decision-making capacity (Mastenbroek and Kaeding 2006). Other studies defined as constructivists’ theories shed light on learning effects. As a rule, the system needs time to develop (Berglund et al. 2006), and domestic administrations learn over time by interacting with the Commission (Dimitrakopoulos 2001) and on culture in terms of satisfaction with democracy, common norms, and the rule of law (Berglund et al. 2006). Other studies identify cultural effects as explanatory models, Falkner et al. (2005) mentioning that there is a typology of three worlds of compliance, and this is also applicable to Eastern countries (Falkner and Treib 2008). Returning to the GPP policy in Romania, unclear legislation and administrative incapacity are the primary explanation for policy failure. The GPP law rather deters than encourages the use of GPP, affecting the uptake of GPP in Romania due to several factors. First, in terms of policy design, although adopted at the same time with the new public procurement set of laws, the GPP law is not correlated with its provisions. The project law for GPP was drafted and initiated much earlier, in 2013, with three Romanian NGOs’ support in a project financed by the Swiss Romanian Cooperation Programme.14 Thus, the law project has gone through a lengthy legislative course because it was amended by the NAPP and several legislative working committees

14

 https://terramileniultrei.ro/2014/01/5-in-5-ani-achizitii-verzi-pentru-o-economie-verde-2/

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

113

within the Deputy Chamber. The law project was allegedly adopted considering the Environment chapter from the Governing Program for 2013–201615 presented by Prime Minister Victor Ponta and the National Strategy for Sustainable Development in force.16 Its declared aim was to contribute to the European Commission targets for protecting the environment and sustainable development. The initiators17 of this law mentioned that its purpose is to encourage the utilization of GPP employing a national action plan for GPP and to inform and create awareness between the contracting authorities concerning the importance of GPP. The GPP law assigns the responsibility with the national policy for GPP to the Ministry for the Environment, Waters, and Forests. Within 6 months from its adoption, these institutions were supposed to draft and approve together with the NAPP and a GPP Guide with minimal environmental criteria and standard technical specifications for services and products. After that, until October 31 next year from the guide’s approval, the mentioned Ministry should have established the NAP for GPP. The NAP is supposed to provide precise mandatory annual targets for public authorities and state-owned companies (a percentage from the value of the total public purchasing done by a contracting authority every year has to be green). Another critical obstacle for a broader uptake of GPP in Romania was that, according to the GPP law, the operator of the ESPP had to set new functions to monitor compliance with the NAP’s targets since 2016. The electronic platform’s supporting functions are essential because they are the instrument employed by the contracting authorities to report the fulfillment of their mandatory annual targets and, by the controlling bodies, to check the compliance with those thresholds. The NAP must comprise two forms: a standard format (GPP form) used by contracting authorities to report in the ESPP every awarding of a “green” contract and a monitoring form (GPP Report), used to report the fulfillment of the annual targets provided in the NAP.18 Although adopted in the same period (May 2016) and although both GPP law and the new public procurement laws created the necessity to change the national electronic platform for public procurement entirely, the ESPP was changed only to support functions for the new public procurement laws. The new electronic platform does not contain any function related to GPP. This was due to the public tender’s problems organized by the Agency for the Digital Agenda of Romania – the platform’s operator and the lack of relevant consultations and interinstitutional cooperation between the NAPP, which is responsible for the regulation of public procurements in Romania.

15  https://lege5.ro/Gratuit/gmztmobrge/hotararea-nr-45-2012-pentru-acordarea-increderiiguvernului 16  The Government Decision no. 1460/2008 for the approval of the National Strategy for Sustainable development – horizons 2013–2020-2030. 17  http://www.cdep.ro/pls/proiecte/upl_pck.lista?cam=2&anl=2016, PL-x 463/15.06.2015, position 69; 18  Art. 5 and art 6 from the law no. 69/2016 regarding the public procurements https://sintact.ro/#/ act/16954917/2?directHit=true&directHitQuery=69~2F2016 – accessed on June 16, 2019.

114

A. Bilan

Thirdly, in opposition to its declared stimulating effect for using GPP, this law brought disproportionate penalties for the noncompliance with the NAP’s mandatory targets or the simple non-filling of those two mentioned compulsory forms, the fines amounting between 2083 euro and 6250 euro.19 Simultaneously, what is puzzling is that much graver deviations from the public procurement laws were sanctioned with smaller fines comprised between 1041 euro and 6250 euro. Considering that in 2016 the medium gross salary per economy in Romania was approximately 558.54 euro and in 2020 is of 1131 euro, these penalties were a severe obstacle for the Ministry to adopt the NAP. Thus, in June 2020, there was still no national action plan adopted for GPP, which seems to be one of the factors that affect the uptake of GPP in Romania. Since 2008, there were several public mentions in the media,20 in studies and reports conducted by academia (Dragoş et al. 2010a) or by NGOs (Cazan 2014) of drafting efforts for a NAP, but this project of a government decision for NAP for Ecological Public Procurement 2009–2013 was never adopted. The document is not available anymore online, but it is described by the quoted sources (Dragoş et al. 2010b) as a first effort to foster sustainable procurement and try to implement the recommendations of the European Commission (European Commission 2008b). The thresholds for buying green from this interim draft from 2008 were considerably greater than the thresholds disseminated in the public space in 2019 by the Ministry of Environment that will be provided by the future NAP.  The interim draft of NAP from 2009 provided eight groups of products and services of interest. Both voluntary and mandatory thresholds were provided for each group: mandatory thresholds between 9% and 30% and 11% and 30% for voluntary targets. On October 5, 2016, the Ministry of Environment from Romania published a questionnaire concerning GPP on its website,21 inquiring which should be the mandatory share of green public procurements out of the total value of public procurement organized in 1 year by the local and central contracting authorities: 1%, 5%, or 10%? This percentage is quite odd if we compare it with the recommendation for a 50% target set by the European Commission 8 years earlier, in 2008 (European Commission 2008b), or with the NAP draft’s mandatory thresholds from 2008.

 1 euro = 4.8 Romanian lei.  https://www.green-report.ro/planul-national-pentru-achizitii-publice-ecologice-costa­160000-­de-lei/; https://www.green-report.ro/ministerul-mediului-pregateste-planul-national-deactiune-pentru-achizitii-publice-ecologice/ 21  http://www.mmediu.ro/app/webroot/uploads/files/2016-10 05_mmap_chestionar_privind_ achizitiile_publice_verzi.pdf – accessed on August 19, 2019. 19

20

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

115

7.6  M  ain Findings in the Scientific Literature in the Field of GPP Policy The concept of GPP22 implies that public purchasers use environmental criteria in tender documents (Evans et al. 2010). Although a relatively new area of research (Testa et al. 2016), the papers on GPP are numerous, and the interest in the research area has almost tripled in the 2010–2020 timeframe (Pătărlăgeanu et al. 2020). The articles discuss GPP as a policy tool,23 the constraints and uptake issues, the specifications of environmental aspects in policy setting and GPP practices, and the effectiveness of GPP.  The main explanatory models for understanding the GPP policy fail in the scientific literature are the lack of proper training and administrative capacity, fear to distort the competition (Thomson and Jackson 2007), the lack of awareness on GPP practices, tools and regulations, the lack of support of external experts (Testa et al. 2011), the small dimension (Michelsen and de Boer 2009) of public authority (Testa et al. 2011) the number and variety of factors to consider when distinguishing or choosing environmentally preferable products (Swanson et  al. 2005), the role of actors in the procurement process (Günther and Scheibe 2006), the financial constraints (Warner and Ryall 2001; Walker and Brammer 2009; Brammer and Walker 2011), the absence of official guidance (Warner and Ryall 2001; Erridge and Hennigan 2012; Igarashi et al. 2015), the lack of dedicated personnel (Michelsen and de Boer 2009; Testa et al. 2016) the behavior of procurers and the absence of a sufficient commitment (Guenther et al. 2013; Grandia 2015, 2016; Hall et  al. 2016) and confidence (Erridge and Hennigan 2012; Hall et  al. 2016), and the attitudes of the suppliers (Oruezabala and Rico 2012; Lundberg and Marklund 2013).

7.7  Conclusions The share of green public procurement from Romania’s total public purchasing in 2020 remains low, possibly between 20% and 25%. The increase in the GPP uptake with almost 10% in the last 10 years is most likely the effect of ex-ante conditionalities imposed by the EU Commission for accessing EU Funds and the mandatory provisions in environmental and energy laws rather than the effect of the GPP law. Although there are various sustainable development strategies in place at the national and local levels recommending to use GPP, we cannot state there is a strategic use of GPP in Romania. If Romania does not commit further resources and tools for training programs, awareness campaigns, and regulatory documents on GPP, most probably the revised waste and energy legislative framework issued by the EU will drag along an increase of GPP utilization in Romania. However, the EU 22 23

 European Commission (2008a).  In older papers dated in 2000 or before.

116

A. Bilan

Commission’s new goal for achieving net-zero carbon emission by 2030 will not allow Romania to align with this target without a strategic approach. The survey results undertaken between May 2019 and January 2020 evidenced a lack of political commitment to support sustainable procurement and little efforts to train staff members or confer them to include environmental considerations in their procedures. The procurement workers are aware of the general benefits of GPP. Still, they are not necessarily aware of their organization’s services, and they are not incentivized or encouraged to initiate GPP.  Additionally, it seems that the public authorities are not aware of the benefits of sustainable procurement for their organization or that inefficient purchasing hurts the environment and leads to a waste of available resources (Marron 2003). The survey indicates public managers cannot identify policies that can be supported by sustainable procurement, and they are not aware that public procurement can shape the companies’ behavior (Witjes and Lozano 2016). Another finding is that public managers did not evaluate the impact of the market for green products and services (Georghiou et al. 2014). In conclusion, the GPP law has to be urgently changed, and a NAP has to be adopted as soon as possible after having precise radiography of the administrative capacity. Adopting an action plan with thresholds closer to the EU Commission’s targets and delivering a more robust and more coherent implementation of the GPP policy should be prioritized by Romania’s central authorities. The Romanian government should develop a systematic monitoring mechanism based on published tenders and encourage contracting officers to be more active and closer to the European network. While this research does not claim to cover all of the aspects that explain Romania’s GPP policy, the study is directly relevant to the EU Commission and UNEP’s activity. These organizations drew up reports and studies that do not contain important information about lagging in Romania or the GPP uptake status in Romania. The paper could guide future steps that have to be taken for a much larger uptake, adopting further legislation and guidance on green public purchasing, including a future NAP. Acknowledgments  A very special thanks goes to Arpad Todor for his keen insight and ongoing support in bringing this chapter to completion.

References Angelova, M., T. Dannwolf, and T. König. 2012. How robust are compliance findings? A research synthesis. Journal of European Public Policy 19: 1269–1291. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350176 3.2012.705051. Bauer, B. 2009. Benefits of green public procurement. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Berglund, S., I.  Gange, and Waarden F. van. 2006. Mass production of law. Routinization in the transposition of European directives: A sociological- institutionalist account. Journal of European Public Policy 13: 692–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760600808550.

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

117

Brammer, S., and H.  Walker. 2011. Sustainable procurement in the public sector: An international comparative study. International Journal of Operations & Production Management 31: 452–476. Burgi, M. 2010. Secondary considerations in public procurement in Germany. In The law of green and social procurement in Europe, 1st ed. Copenhahen: DJØF Publishing. Burja, C., and Burja, V. 2009. Some aspects of the sustainable development in Romania. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 3(6). Caranta, R., G. Edelstam, and M. Trybus. 2013. EU public contract law: Public procurement and beyond. Primento. Cazan, R. 2014. Achiziţii Publice Ecologice în România protecţia mediului prin cheltuieli publice responsabile. Bucharest: Ecopolis. Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). 2012. The uptake of green public procurement in the Eu27. COM. 2016. 739 final (2016) Next steps for a sustainable European future European action for sustainability. Commission. 2001. Commission adopts green paper on integrated product policy. IP/01/180. Compton, M., and P. Hart. 2019. Great policy successes. New York: Oxford University Press. Dimitrakopoulos, D. 2001. Learning and steering: Changing implementation patterns and the Greek central government. Journal of European Public Policy 8: 604–622. Directorate-General for Communication (European Commission). 2019. COM (2019)22 towards a sustainable Europe by 2030 Reflection paper. Brussels: European Commission. Dragoş, D., B. Neamţu, and Velişcu. 2010a. Secondary considerations in public procurement in Romania, 189–232. Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing Copenhagen. ———. 2010b. Secondary considerations in public procurement in Romania, 189–232. Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing Copenhagen. Erridge, A., and S. Hennigan. 2012. Sustainable procurement in health and social care in Northern Ireland. Public Money & Management 32: 363–370. European Commission. 2001. COM (2001) 274 final  – Interpretative communication of the Commission on the Community law applicable to public procurement and the possibilities for integrating environmental considerations into public procurement. Official Journal of the European Union. ———. 2003. COM/2003/0302 final. Brussels. ——— .2008a. COM (2008) 400 final “Public procurement for a better environment”. ———. 2008b. COM (2008) 400 final. ———. 2010a. COM (2010) 2020 final EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Brussels: EC. ———. 2010b. COM (2010) 2020 final EUROPE 2020 A European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Brussels: European Commission. ———. 2012. European Resource Efficiency Platform (EREP) Manifesto & Policy Recommendation. ———. 2014. Partnership Agreement Romania 2014RO16M8PA001.1.2. ———. 2016. Buying green! A handbook on green public procurement 3rd edition. 3rd ed. Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union. ———. 2017a. European semester thematic factsheet public procurement. ———. 2017b. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Making Public Procurement Work in and for Europe. ———. 2019a. COM (2019) 640 final the European Green Deal. Brussels. ———. 2019b. GPP Training toolkit 3. Legal Aspects of GPP. In ec.europa.eu. https://ec.europa. eu/environment/gpp/toolkit_en.htm. Accessed 1 Oct 2019. Evans L, Nuttall C, Mouat A, Ewing D (2010) Assessment and comparison of national green and sustainable public procurement criteria and underlying schemes. Final Rep.

118

A. Bilan

Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three worlds of compliance or four? The EU-15 compared to new member states*. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. Falkner, G., O. Treib, M. Hartlapp, and S. Leiber. 2005. Complying with Europe: EU harmonisation and soft law in the member states. New York: Cambridge University Press. Georghiou, L., J. Edler, E. Uyarra, and J. Yeow. 2014. Policy instruments for public procurement of innovation: Choice, design and assessment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 86: 1–12. Grandia, J. 2015. The role of change agents in sustainable public procurement projects. Public Money & Management 35(2): 119–126. ———. 2016. Finding the missing link: Examining the mediating role of sustainable public procurement behavior. Journal of Cleaner Production 124: 183–190. ISSN 0959-6526. Guenther, E., A.-K. Hueske, K. Stechemesser, and L. Buscher. 2013. The ‘Why Not’–perspective of green purchasing: A multilevel case study analysis. Journal of Change Management 13(4): 407–423. Günther, E., and L. Scheibe. 2006. The hurdle analysis. A self-evaluation tool for municipalities to identify, analyse and overcome hurdles to green procurement. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management 13: 61–77. Hall, P., K. Löfgren, and G. Peters. 2016. Greening the street-level procurer: Challenges in the strongly decentralized Swedish system. Journal of Consumer Policy 39: 467–483. Hasanbeigi, A., R. Becque, and C. Springer. 2019. Curbing carbon from consumption: The role of green public procurement. San Francisco: Global Efficiency Intelligence. Igarashi, M., L. de Boer, and O. Michelsen. 2015. Investigating the anatomy of supplier selection in green public procurement. Journal of Cleaner Production 108: 442–450. Kaeding, M. 2008. Lost in translation or full steam ahead: The transposition of EU transport directives across member states. European Union Politics 9: 115–143. Kahlenborn, W., C.  Moser, J.  Frijdal, and M.  Essig. 2011. Strategic use of public procurement in Europe final report to the European Commission MARKT/2010/02/C. Belmont, Berlin: Adelphi. Kozik, R., and I. Karasińska – Jaśkowiec. 2016. Green public procurement – legal base and instruments supporting sustainable development in the construction industry in Poland. E3S Web Conf. 10 00044. Lundberg, S., and P.O.  Marklund. 2013. Green public procurement as an environmental policy instrument: Cost-effectiveness. Environmental Economics 4(4): 75–83. Marron, D.B. 2003. Greener public purchasing as an environmental policy. OECD Journal on Budgeting 3: 71–105. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization beyond the goodness of fit: Domestic politics in the forefront. Comp Eur Polit 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave. cep.6110078. Mbaye, H.A. 2001. Why national states comply with supranational law: Explaining implementation infringements in the European Union, 1972–1993. European Union Politics 2: 259–281. Michelsen, O., and L. de Boer. 2009. Green procurement in Norway; a survey of practices at the municipal and county level. Journal of Environmental Management 91: 160–167. Ministry of Environment. 2018. Romania’s voluntary national review – Transformation towards a sustainable and resilient Romania. O’Rourke, A., C. Leire, and T. Bowden. 2013. Sustainable public procurement: A global review. Final report. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme. OECD. 2002. Recommendation of the council on improving the environmental performance of public procurement. ———. 2017. Government at a Glance 2017. OECD. Oruezabala, G., and J.-C. Rico. 2012. The impact of sustainable public procurement on supplier management — The case of French public hospitals. Industrial Marketing Management 41(4): 573 –580.

7  Buying Green? How a Green Public Procurement-Dedicated Law Can Do More…

119

Pătărlăgeanu, S.R., M. Dinu, and M. Constantin. 2020. Bibliometric analysis of the field of green public procurement. Amfiteatru Economic 22: 71–81. Romanian Department for Sustainable Development. 2018. The national strategy for the sustainable development of Romania 2030. Bucharest: Paideia. Romanian Government. 2008. Government Decision No. 1460 on 12 November 2008 -National Sustainable Development Strategy of Romania. Horizons 2013-2020-2030 Romanian Parliament. 2001. Law no. 3/2001 for the ratification of The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Frame-convention on the climate changes adopted on December 11, 1997. Swanson, M., A. Weissman, G. Davis, et al. 2005. Developing priorities for greener state government purchasing: A California case study. Journal of Cleaner Production 13: 669–677. Tallberg, J. 2002. Paths to compliance: Enforcement, management, and the European Union. International Organization 56: 609–643. Testa F, Iraldo F, Daddi T, Frey M (2011) What factors influence the uptake of GPP (Green Public Procurement) practices? New evidence from an Italian survey. Working Paper Istituto di Management Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa 6/201120. Testa, F., E. Annunziata, F. Iraldo, and M. Frey. 2016. Drawbacks and opportunities of green public procurement: An effective tool for sustainable production. Journal of Cleaner Production 112: 1893–1900. Thomson, J., and T. Jackson. 2007. Sustainable procurement in practice: Lessons from local government. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 50: 421–444. Toshkov, D. 2008. Embracing European law: Compliance with EU directives in Central and Eastern Europe. European Union Politics 9: 379–402. ———. 2010. Taking stock: A review of quantitative studies of transposition and implementation of EU law. Institute for European Integration Research: 25–26. Tukker, A., S. Emmert, M. Charter, et al. 2008. Fostering change to sustainable consumption and production: An evidence based view. Journal of Cleaner Production 16: 1218–1225. United Nations Environment Programme. 2012. Sustainable public procurement implementation guidelines- introducing UNEP’s approach. Paris: UNEPDPI. Walker, H., and S. Brammer. 2009. Sustainable procurement in the United Kingdom public sector. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 14: 128–137. Warner, K.E., and C. Ryall. 2001. Greener purchasing activities within UK local authorities. Eco-­ Management and Auditing: The Journal of Corporate Environmental Management 8: 36–45. Witjes, S., and R. Lozano. 2016. Towards a more circular economy: Proposing a framework linking sustainable public procurement and sustainable business models. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 112: 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.04.015. ———. 2016a. Law no. 98/2016 on public procurement. ———. 2016b. Law no. 99/2016 on sectorial procurement. ———. 2016c. Law no. 100/2016 on concessions of works and concessions of services p. Alina Bilan is a Ph.D. student in political sciences at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, and holds an LLM in business law from the Faculty of Law, Bucharest University, and an MS in environmental studies and sustainable development from N.U.P.S.P.A Bucharest, Romania. Since 2005, Alina Bilan is a public procurement and administrative law specialized lawyer and elected as the president of an NGO – Romanian Association for Local Sustainable Development in 2017. In her activity, she seeks to support the administration of the local communities from Romania to organize sustainable public procurement procedures, and she is trying permanently to increase the awareness of people employed by contracting authorities or public-owned companies on the importance of green public procurement for the environment and for sustainable development.  

Chapter 8

Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania Arpad Todor and Florența-Elena Helepciuc

Abstract  Agriculture is a human activity that has essential effects on the environment as it employs the largest surface area compared to other activities. Based on the intensive utilization of land and large quantities of synthetic pesticides, the current predominant way of producing food is not compatible with avoiding environmental degradation and maintaining biodiversity. We evaluate Romania’s Europeanization of policies in this area by studying its approach to the “pesticide package” adopted in 2009. The package design allowed the EU member states to focus on its formal implementation and technical measures to improve the status quo. Instead, measures aimed at moving agriculture toward sustainability through the employment of integrated pest management (IPM), low-risk alternatives to synthetic pesticides, and organic agriculture were mostly absent.

8.1  Introduction The current rate at which humanity exploits and affects the environment is unsustainable. Among the activities that negatively affect the environment, contribute to a significant decrease in biodiversity, and generate substantial land and water pollution is the current intensive, synthetic-pesticide-based agriculture (Mahmood et al. 2016). In the last two decades, this understanding has led to efforts worldwide to eliminate the most harmful pesticides, regulate their usage, and promote alternative approaches. Especially in the EU, this was done primarily through integrated pest management (IPM), stimulating organic agriculture and promoting biological A. Todor (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] F.-E. Helepciuc Institute of Biology Bucharest, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_8

121

122

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

control agents as alternatives to synthetic pesticides. Nevertheless, despite these efforts and continuous improvement, significant progress is still limited to a few countries. These efforts picked up steam in the European Union at the beginning of the 2000s and led to adopting the “pesticide package” in 2009, shortly after Romania’s EU accession. Romania is one of the countries with the largest agricultural surface in Europe, along with Poland, Germany, and Italy, and agriculture contributes the most to its GDP and employs the highest percentage of its population of any EU member state. Thus, we expect that this implicitly environmental public policy will be of maximum importance to Romania. In this chapter, we discuss the implementation of some of the provisions of the directives, with a particular focus on Romania’s approval of products based on low-­ risk microbial biological control agents (MBCAs) and its efforts to promote the sustainable use of pesticides through practices such as integrated pest management (IPM). IPM is defined as a “careful consideration of all available plant protection methods and subsequent integration of appropriate measures that discourage the development of populations of harmful organisms and keep the use of plant protection products and other forms of intervention to levels that are economically and ecologically justified and reduce or minimise risks to human health and the environment” (European Commission 2017). An important measurement of success would be to avoid triggering an infringement procedure on the matter. Nevertheless, given that some of the “pesticide package” provisions were elaborated in a diluted form, except for the legislation’s transposition, it offers little ground for infringement procedures, as no quantifiable targets were set. As such, in order to define the success of the implementation of the pesticide package, we focus on the main aims of the policies. First, in terms of promoting alternatives to detrimental synthetic pesticides, Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and the Council of October 21, 2009, mentions one of the aims of increasing incentives to placing low-­ risk plant protection products on the market. This aim has also been reiterated through the European Parliament’s Resolution of February 15, 2017, on low-risk pesticides of biological origin (2016/2903(RSP)). It called for an acceleration in the use of low-risk plant protection products through measures to “accelerate the evaluation, authorization, registration, and monitoring of the use of low-risk plant protection products of biological origin while maintaining risk assessment at a high level.” It also called to stimulate registration and cooperation at the level of the EU MS (European Parliament 2017). Thus, relative to these aims, success can be evaluated through the increase in the availability of low-risk pesticides, including those based on biological control agents for the agricultural sector. Second, in terms of stimulating alternative agriculture methods that would limit the use of synthetic pesticides, we define the successful implementation of the pesticide package in terms of the systematic promotion of these measures in the national action plans (NAPs). Article 4 of Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and the council on the sustainable use of pesticides (known as the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive – SUD) elaborates the main aims of NAPs needed to advance the general policy aims of the directive to (1) advance quantifiable objectives,

8  Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania

123

targets, measures, and indicators to reduce risks and impacts of pesticide use on human health and the environment and (2) encourage the development and introduction of IPM and of (3) “alternative approaches or techniques to reduce dependency on pesticides.” The chapter is structured as follows: first, we discuss the evolution of biocontrol and present the main features of the pesticide package. In this section, we also discuss the most critical debates in the academic literature on the matter. Second, we present some historical elements of Romania’s approach to the sustainability of agriculture. Third, we present the evolutions that allow us to evaluate the policy implementation’s success and define the main factors that determined these evolutions. Fourth, we discuss the results from the point of view of Europeanization literature and assess different models’ explanatory strength. In Conclusion, we discuss the implications of the findings and elaborate on the steps that could be taken to improve the problem.

8.2  H  istorical Evolution of the Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture Modern agriculture has led to the ever-increasing use of synthetic pesticides that decrease crop loss caused by pests and have multiple and unpredictable negative effects on the environment and the population. While the more stringent criteria for pesticide approval developed in recent decades mean that many of them are not reapproved, those already in use will impact the environment for a long time. One of the critical efforts in finding paths toward the sustainability of agriculture focuses on biological control employment. While biological control has been used since the dawn of agriculture, its modern use started in the nineteenth century. Biological control was first documented in ancient China (van Lenteren and Godfray 2005). Its modern employment started in the 1880s when insect pathogen Metarhizium anisopliae was used for various crops in Russia for the control of beetles. Subsequently, biological control started to be used systematically in the 1970s and developed as a professional industry with research and production facilities but accelerated only after 1995. During that period, a whole range of “efficient agents have been identified, quality control protocols, mass production, shipment and release methods matured, and adequate guidance for farmers has been developed” (van Lenteren et al. 2018, p. 51). Nevertheless, this research effort resulted in only a few newly discovered biological control agents (BCAs) that underwent the registration process and were approved for marketing. It was not until 2010 that a new impetus was felt as more new organisms went into developing approved biocontrol agents. Compared to synthetic pesticides, using biocontrol agents has some advantages, such as the limited detrimental effects on farmworkers and farming communities’ health in their entirety, the lack of preharvest interval, or reentry period (Kiewnick 2007) typical of pesticide application. They are also sustainable, as it is highly

124

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

unlikely for these products to lead to resistance development in pathogens due to the complexity of mechanisms involved in the pathogen control (Köhl et  al. 2019). Moreover, some BCAs can positively affect yields due to their direct effect on plant growth and development and crops’ health (Syed-Ab-Rahman et  al. 2017). The advances in IPM in the EU also increased interest in the application of BCAs (Lamichhane 2017). BCAs were being applied to more than 30 million ha. by 2018 (out of a total of more than 14 billion ha. worldwide), mostly using invertebrate BCAs in the EU and MBCAs in the USA and fast-developing markets in Latin America and Asia. Biocontrol methods are popular as they lead to healthier crops and a positive effect on farmworkers and communities and the professional functioning of the biological control industry, with “inexpensive large-scale mass production; proper quality control; efficient packaging, distribution, and release methods; and availability of many (440 species) control agents for numerous pests)” and the capacity to provide replacements for pesticides (with increasing pressure to do so coming from NGOs and policymakers). Furthermore, there is a positive public perception, as consumers are more and more concerned about the environmental impact of the food they consume and the safety of substances present in their food (van Lenteren et al. 2018). Despite these advantages and the fast growth of the BCA industry in the past decade, a 2016 report evaluated the BCA worldwide market at US$1.5 billion, only 2% of the synthetic pesticide market (Researchandmarkets 2016). By 2020, the worldwide market for BCAs increases to 3.6 billion euro worldwide and 800 million euro in the EU (Vekemans and Marchand 2020). At the EU level, biological control companies specialize mainly in the sale of invertebrate BCAs, but they have also picked up production of MBCAs. Eighty percent of BCAs are usually used for indoor protected crops and high-value outdoor crops. Single-agent control programs cover 20% of the market. Around 40% of EU companies’ turnover involves selling invertebrate control agents for controlling thrips, 30% for whiteflies, 8% for aphids, and 12% for mites, with a significant increase in recent years’ predatory mites (van Lenteren et al. 2018, p. 53). Some other important factors that shape the use of biological control are the availability of IPM programs for specific crops; the cost of such programs in comparison with chemical alternatives in combination with the existence of firms that can reliably provide a solution; and support from state institutions (van Lenteren 2012, pp. 15–20).

8.3  R  egulating the Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture While the use of invertebrate BCAs is not subject to registration by the Directorate-­ General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) (Ehlers 2011, p. 4), the employment of microbial organisms in large numbers as a means to reduce pests (MBCAs) is highly regulated in most developed countries. The most complex registration system is employed by the EU (Balog et  al. 2017). The registration of all active

8  Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania 125

ingredients of all plant protection products was regulated across the EU for the first time through Directive 91/414/EEC, which has been subsequently amended by Directives 2001/36/EC and 2005/25EC and then replaced by Directive 1107/2009 as part of the pesticide package. Despite being adapted twice, the initial EC Regulation has proven to be a massive hurdle in the development of the sector, as it has imposed burdensome procedures (designed to test synthetic pesticides) on a sector for which risks and potential commercial benefits are significantly smaller. The cost for registering a “substance” (this is a generic term used in the EU legislation that also covers MBCA strains, with some registration processes including one strain while others can include several strains) was evaluated at roundly 0.8 and 2.5 million euro and thus too high for the potential commercial exploitation of most substances (Ehlers 2011). The market size is much smaller due to their high specificity, and the efficiency trials are much more difficult and costly for BCAs. The average BCA registration took 9 years with additional 2 years for member statelevel product authorization (Frederiks and Wesseler 2019). Despite increased investment in research and development, both in the public and private sectors, these efforts’ transformation into exploitable products has been minimal. This major failure that affected the BCA sector’s evolution for almost 20  years led to elaborating the pesticide package in 2009 (Ehlers 2011, p.  9). In recognizing this failure, the EU Policy Support Action has supported the Regulation of Biological Control Agents in Europe (REBECA) program. REBECA aimed to propose measures to improve the registration process through such measures as improving the pre-submission communication between applicants and the authorities, harmonizing the procedures across EU member states, introducing predictable timelines for the evaluation and approval process, making the efficacy requirements more flexible, introducing species-level instead of strain-level evaluations for those species that proved to present no risk to humans, introducing a hierarchical risk assessment procedure for bacteria and fungi, introducing a procedure to deal with hazardous microbial decay products, and automatic labeling as low-risk for substances with a history of safe use (Ehlers 2011). Aiming to improve the efficient use of pesticides and the development of BCAs, the EU has advocated since 2007 the extension of biocontrol use and adopted the pesticide package consisting of: 1. Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 21, 2009, concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market 2. Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 25, 2009, concerning statistics on pesticides 3. Directive 2009/127/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 21, 2009, amending Directive 2006/42/EC regulating the machinery for pesticide application 4. Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of October 21, 2009, regulating the community action to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides (Remáč 2018)

126

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

Despite the improvements brought through the legislation, the registration of MBCAs had remained a two-stage procedure, as in the case of synthetic pesticides (Regulation No. 1107/2009). In the first stage, a rapporteur member completes an evaluation. Subsequently, the report is evaluated, and the European Food Safety Authority performs a risk assessment. Finally, the verdict is arrived at by vote in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF Committee) by a qualified majority ballot. Once approved, low-risk substances need to be reevaluated within 15 years (within 10 in the case of synthetic pesticides). A second-stage approval must be undertaken to introduce the market plant-protection products containing low-risk substances. The EU MS is split into three zones, depending on the prevailing climatic conditions. For each zone, a Zonal Rapporteur performs the evaluation based on a dossier that evaluates the proposed products’ efficiency and recommends the authorization or refusal of the product for all EU MS in that zone. While states can refuse to grant authorization, they have to provide specific reasons. Thus, once the approval procedure is finalized in one EU region, the effort from the rest of the MS in that region is minimal. The process of product approval is usually undertaken by private entities interested in commercializing a product to bring it to market. Thus, the number of approvals is significantly influenced by each state’s active policies to promote the implementation of measures to encourage the use of alternative agricultural methods such as IPM or organic agriculture. The pesticide package also obliged each member state to develop a national integrated pest management plan that included biological control methods. Additionally, each EU member state had to develop a national action plan by 2012 as a means to improve the application of IPM, including the stimulation of its biological control industry that would become the compulsory crop protection approach after 2014. It is important to stress that switching from intensive synthetic-pesticide-based agriculture to more environmentally friendly agriculture, employing IPM, using BCAs or organic farming brings high financial, logistic, and opportunity costs. Synthetic pesticides are readily available and still cheaper as they do not include the long-term costs in terms of pollution, adverse effects on humans’ health, or loss of biodiversity. As such, progress is significantly dependent on the proactive measures taken by each EU MS. Interest in funding relevant biological control research programs is also important as current investment in the field is evaluated to be only 1% of the investment in chemical pesticide research (van Lenteren 2012, pp. 15–20). While the situation has improved across the EU, despite the huge potential of MBCAs and the 2009 legislative modifications (in force since 2011), their usage in the EU is still hampered by the complex regulatory regime. Also, the approval process is lengthier than in the USA. Although the impetus provided by the 2009 pesticide package accelerated the approval process, by 2020, the number of biocontrol strains approved in the EU, reached only 84 approved strains. Considering the products based on approved strains that have passed the second stage, the progress among EU MS is very unevenly distributed. In Helepciuc and Todor (unpublished data), we show that MBCA approval in the EU countries between 2014 and 2019 increased by an average of 10.4 products. In contrast,

8  Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania

127

Romania had six products approved in 2014, increasing to nine in 2019, similar to countries where agricultural surface area is insignificant (Latvia, Bulgaria, or Finland). As Romania is part of the central climatic zone, along with countries such as Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK, a high number of approved agents, the effort to approve the products would have been minimal. As we analyzed the 42 reports of the National Commission for Homologation of Plant Protection Products of Romania meetings between 2008 and 2019, we discovered that while more than 1000 approval and reapproval decisions have been taken as regards various synthetic pesticides, there have been only nine requests for low-­ risk substances. In all cases, the products have been approved elsewhere (two in France, one in Belgium, one in Poland, two in Austria, one in the Czech Republic, two in the UK), products based on the most used MCBAs (four products based on Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. Kurstaki, one on Trichoderma asperellum, one on Pythium oligandrum, one on Pseudomonas spp.). To understand why this lack of interest to approve MCBA low-risk products for usage prevails in one of the countries with the most agricultural land and with the highest importance placed on agriculture in the EU, we have analyzed the NAP requested by the SUD from 2012 and 2019 and also the strategy for the development of the agri-food sector in the medium- and long-term 2020–2030. A comparative analysis by Helepciuc and Todor (forthcoming 2020) on the first national action plans after the adoption of the SUD compares the NAPs of eight EU MS adopted between 2012 and 2013. Our first aim was to evaluate the degree to which the second and third aims stated in Article 4 of the SUD (promote IPM and alternatives to synthetic pesticides) were integrated. Romania’s national action plan is, not unsurprisingly, the one that was the least developed in terms of measures that would actually operationalize the goals of the SUD. Regarding IPM, it contained only mentions of fostering information gathering and dissemination, while it did not discuss at all the promotion of low-risk MCBAs or other approaches to decrease dependence on pesticides. Furthermore, there was no mention of organic farming in the national action plan, unlike in those of the rest of the analyzed countries. To evaluate whether significant progress occurred since 2013, we have also analyzed the 2019 national action plan and examined the degree to which the aims of the SUD have been better integrated. Regarding the implementation of IPM, the 2019 NAP contains no evaluation of the progress already achieved and proposes only minimal measures as to draw “crop – or sector-specific guidelines regarding the integrated management of harmful organisms.” It also proposes to develop just “one set of crop-specific guidelines over the NAP validity period” (Government of Romania 2019, p. 10). Regarding the use of low-risk products, the 2019 NAP proposed that a “system for the integrated management of harmful organisms will be developed and implemented while promoting the introduction of plant protection products (PPPs) containing low-risk active substances and of alternative techniques designed to reduce PPPs use” (Government of Romania 2019, p. 10). Nevertheless, this mention was not further operationalized in terms of concrete measures. As in the previous NAP, there was no mention of organic farming or organic agriculture.

128

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

The first overview report on the implementation of member states’ measures to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides under Directive 2009/128/EC (DG Health and Food Safety 2017), based on the responses by EU member states, focused almost exclusively on evaluating the technical measures adopted to mitigate the effects of synthetic pesticides. Although it contained some references to the implementation of IPM measures by various member states, it contained no red flags to stress some states’ absence of measures. Furthermore, the third aim of the NAP, referring to the promotion of alternative approaches to synthetic pesticides, has been relatively ignored. The Strategy for the Rural Development of Romania 2014–2020 (Ministry of Agriculture and Sustainable Development 2013, pp. 2014–2020) contains in Article 30 a discussion of the measures aimed at promoting organic farming, especially those to promote better education, assistance for farmers, and the provision of demonstrations. To verify whether the limited planning for such measures came merely from the fact that they were included elsewhere, we have also analyzed the other two strategies that could have included measures proposed in the SUD.  The strategy for developing the agri-food sector in the medium- and long-term 2020–2030 (Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Romania 2017) mentions the principle of durability in its vision and promotes environmentally friendly agricultural policies. Nevertheless, the part that develops the most important measures to be implemented to achieve the strategy’s aims does not contain any explicit measures to promote the utilization of IPM, the fostering of organic agriculture, or the use of low-risk substances.

8.4  Theoretical Discussion This section will interpret the evolution of the literature on the Europeanization of public policies in general and sustainable agriculture policies in particular. As defined in the introductory section, Europeanization in the area covered by the pesticide package could be interpreted in a strictly formal way, representing the implementation of the measures proposed in the regulations and directives to the point of avoiding any infringement procedure. Positively, Romania was not among the 23 countries that receive a letter from the EC for failure to comply with some of the requirements of the “pesticide package” focusing on those measures aimed to limit the impact of pesticides on the environment (Wax 2020). Indeed, Romania adopted the directive, created the secondary legislation needed to implement the policies, and introduced its national action plan shortly after the 2012 deadline and further updated its NAP in 2019. Nevertheless, let’s analyze the more substantive meaning of Europeanization. We should evaluate this based on the degree to which the national action plan aims were operationalized through concrete measures. By these criteria, the NAP is overlooking the two aims this chapter focuses on such as promoting IPM and the use of low-risk substances (mainly MBCAs) and

8  Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania

129

only focuses on the first aim to handle better and use synthetic pesticides. Thus, given the complexity of the pesticide package, especially for a country with minimal “goodness-of-fit,” the undertaken actions have focused almost exclusively on the very technical measures regarding the current intensive agriculture system based on an intensive usage of pesticides and have overlooked the more ambitious goals. Because monitoring and enforcement from the Commission focused on the adoption and creation of the national action plans, and the package contained no clearly defined measurements, the leverage of the Commission was minimal in terms of constraining Romania to undertake measures to operationalize two of the aims of the national action plans. Thus, the limited interest could be explained in terms of “policy misfit” (Borzel 2000) but also in terms of the structures of national interest groups and interest group organization (Duina 1997; Duina and Blithe 1999). There are no powerful associations to push for faster implementation of IPM, organic agriculture development, and more comprehensive access to MBCA products. The NAP analysis reveals they had few measures to promote stakeholder consultation during their implementation, and Romania also lacks nongovernmental organizations that would actively encourage more sustainable agriculture. As a result, the plans have reflected the status quo, focusing on increasing production and making it more competitive on the international market. Given that the SUD implementation was not subject to significant struggles, minimal debate on the areas covered by this analysis, the explanatory models based on institutional decision-making constraints, administrative efficiency, and the constructivist approaches are less relevant in explaining Romania’s case evolutions. Elaborating on the NAP did not pose interministerial coordination problems like those described by Mastenbroek and Kaeding (2006), and various aims could have been mentioned without specific targets attached to them. Thus, in this policy, we would have expected that it would have contained references to these aims. To a certain extent, Romania has benefited from the learning effects of complying with the formal aspects of directives in this field. It focused on those aspects of the pesticide package that were easiest to meet and avoid any more substantive aims. Our findings parallel those of (Orru and Rothstein 2015). They stress that new EU member states’ good record on compliance can be explained by the “blind-eye” style of Europeanization, concentrating on those directions that can be scrutinized by the EU while disregarding more complex problems.

8.5  Conclusions In this chapter, we have analyzed the evolutions in Romania triggered by EU “pesticide package.” We focused on three of the aims of this legislative package, to increase the sustainability of agriculture by fostering the usage of low-risk MBCA, implementing IPM, and promoting organic farming. Our analysis started from the observation that Romania’s progress in increasing the availability of low-risk MBCA was minimal by 2019. To understand why this was the case, we focused mostly on analyzing the national action plan required by SUD and analyzed two

130

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

other relevant strategies. While two of the three aims of the national action plan promoted explicitly actions to encourage the adoption of IPM and the introduction of “alternative approaches or techniques to reduce dependency on pesticides,” both the 2013 and 2019 national action plans were almost totally devoid of such measures. Our theoretically driven interpretation of the degree to which this situation can be depicted as a Europeanization of policies in this field leads us to conclude that, not unexpectedly, Romania has focused on fully meeting all the formal requirements of the pesticide package and the technical measures to limit the impact of pesticides. Instead, it overlooked measures that were elaborated as general aims and were not associated with clearly measurable targets and thus could be much more challenging to monitor. Furthermore, as shown, the EU Commission’s first evaluation of the directive’s implementation focused on the formal aspects and did not discuss the more substantive measures associated with the national action plans’ second and third goals.

References Balog, A., T. Hartel, H.D. Loxdale, and K. Wilson. 2017. Differences in the progress of the biopesticide revolution between the EU and other major crop-growing regions. Pest Management Science 73: 2203–2208. https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.4596. Borzel, T.A. 2000. Why there is no “southern problem”. On environmental leaders and laggards in the European Union. J Eur Public Policy 7: 141–162. https://doi. org/10.1080/135017600343313. DG Health and Food Safety. 2017. Overview Report on the implementation of Member State’s measures to achieve the sustainable use of pesticides under directive 2009/128/EC. DG Health and Food Safety. Duina, F. 1997. Explaining legal implementation in the European Union. Int J Sociol Law 25: 155–179. https://doi.org/10.1006/ijsl.1997.0039. Duina, F., and F. Blithe. 1999. Nation-states and common markets: the institutional conditions for acceptance. Rev Int Polit Econ 6: 494–530. https://doi.org/10.1080/096922999347146. Ehlers, R.-U. 2011. Regulation of Biological Control Agents and the EU Policy Support Action REBECA. In Regulation of Biological Control Agents, ed. R.-U. Ehlers. Dordrecht: Springer. European Comission. 2017. Integrated Pest Management (IPM). In: Food Saf. - Eur. Comm. https:// ec.europa.eu/food/plant/pesticides/sustainable_use_pesticides/ipm_en. Accessed 16 Dec 2020. European Parliament. 2017. European Parliament resolution of 15 February 2017 on low-risk pesticides of biological origin. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-­8-­2017-­0042_ EN.html. Accessed 3 Sep 2019. Frederiks, C., and J.H. Wesseler. 2019. A comparison of the EU and US regulatory frameworks for the active substance registration of microbial biological control agents. Pest Management Science 75: 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.5133. Government of Romania. 2019. NATIONAL ACTIONPLAN for mitigating the risks related to the use of plant protection products (HOTĂRÂRE nr. 135 din 12 martie 2019 pentru aprobarea Planului naţional de acţiune privind diminuarea riscurilor asociate utilizării produselor de protecţie a plantelor). Kiewnick, S. 2007. Practicalities of developing and registering microbial biologicalcontrol agents. CAB Rev Perspect Agric Vet Sci Nutr Nat Resour 2. https://doi.org/10.1079/ PAVSNNR20072013.

8  Promoting Alternative Methods for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture in Romania

131

Köhl, J., R.  Kolnaar, and W.J.  Ravensberg. 2019. Mode of action of microbial biological controlagents against plant diseases: Relevance beyond efficacy. Front Plant Sci 10. https://doi. org/10.3389/fpls.2019.00845. Lamichhane, J.R. 2017. Pesticide use and risk reduction in European farming systems with IPM: An introduction to the special issue. Crop Prot 97: 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cropro.2017.01.017. Mahmood, I., S.R. Imadi, K. Shazadi, et al. 2016. Effects of Pesticides on Environment. In Plant, Soil and Microbes, ed. K.R. Hakeem, M.S. Akhtar, and S.N.A. Abdullah, vol. 1.: Implications in Crop Science, 253–269. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization beyond the goodness of fit: Domestic politics in the forefront.. Comp Eur Polit 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave. cep.6110078. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Romania. 2017. Strategia pentru dezvoltarea sectorului agroalimentar pe termen mediu și lung orizont 2020–2030. Bucharest: Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Romania. Ministry of Agriculture and Sustainable Development. 2013. Strategia de dezvoltare rurală a României 2014–2020. Bucharest. Orru, K., and H.  Rothstein. 2015. Not ‘Dead Letters’, Just ‘Blind Eyes’: The Europeanisation of Drinking Water Risk Regulation in Estonia and Lithuania. Environment and Planning A. https://doi.org/10.1068/a130295p. Remáč, M. 2018. Directive 2009/128/EC on the sustainable use of pesticides European Implementation Assessment. Brussels: European Parliamentary Research Service. Researchandmarkets. 2016. Global pesticides market segmented by type, application area and geography. Trends and forecasts (2015–2020). Sustainability, regulation & competition. Syed-Ab-Rahman, S.F., E.  Singh, C.  Pieterse, and P.  Schenk. 2017. Emerging microbial biocontrol strategies for plant pathogens. Plant Sci 267: 102–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. plantsci.2017.11.012. van Lenteren, J.C. 2012. The state of commercial augmentative biological control: Plenty of natural enemies, but a frustrating lack of uptake. BioControl 57: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10526-­011-­9395-­1. van Lenteren, J.C., K. Bolckmans, J. Köhl, et al. 2018. Biological control using invertebrates and microorganisms: Plenty of new opportunities. BioControl 63: 39–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10526-­017-­9801-­4. van Lenteren, J.C., and H.C.J.  Godfray. 2005. European science in the Enlightenment and the discovery of the insect parasitoid life cycle in The Netherlands and Great Britain. Biological Control 32: 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2004.08.009. Vekemans, M.-C., and P.A. Marchand. 2020. The fate of biocontrol agents under the European phytopharmaceutical regulation: How this regulation hinders the approval of botanicals as new active substances. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27: 39879–39887. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11356-­020-­10114-­6. Wax, E. 2020. Brussels confronts EU countries over pesticides and animal welfare. In Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-­confronts-­eu-­countriesover-­pesticides-­and-­animal-­ welfare/. Accessed 12 Nov 2020. Arpad Todor  is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within

132

A. Todor and F.-E. Helepciuc

the CEU.  He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor Florenţa-Elena Helepciuc  earned B.S.c and M.Sc. degrees in plant biotechnologies from the University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest, and a Ph.D. in biology from the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy. Starting from 2006, Helepciuc FlorenţaElena has been working as a researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy in projects concerning phytopathogens biocontrol, endangered and rare plant species conservation, and plant and microbial secondary metabolites, and published several articles in these fields. Recently she has been involved in projects concerning public policies for sustainable development and biodiversity.

Chapter 9

Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy Oana-Andreea Ion and Cătălin-Gabriel Done

Abstract  The transformations within the Romanian national sustainable development strategies are a part of the European agenda being a relevant subject of Europeanization. This chapter uses qualitative methodology to explore the consequences of implementing NSDSs in three areas – rural development, human capital, and social disparities. Using a top-down approach, we will offer an integrated model to the Europeanization of Romanian public policies, analyzing government actors’ capacity to implement sustainable development strategies while adapting to international development principles. Simultaneously, the three areas of analysis are incredibly relevant, as they can provide an integrated understanding of the issues Romania has faced in the last 30  years. Rural development, human capital, and social divisions are critical elements of public policies and significant interest factors to the European Union and the UN.

9.1  Introduction To what extent does accession and integration in the EU upgrade one country’s administrative capacity and policy orientation? As economic development policies are the most consequential on the environment, one country’s capacity to plan and implement sustainable development policies is crucial in limiting the current pace of environmental destruction and resource depletion.

O.-A. Ion (*) National University for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] C.-G. Done University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_9

133

134

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

This chapter aims to define and outline Romania’s capacity to design and implement national sustainable development strategies (NSDS) on three specific issues: rural development, human capital, and social disparities. The complexity of the rural development sector, the importance of the human capital, and the significant social disparities at the domestic level, as Romania is among an unequal EU MS, are illustrative analytical units for evaluating the Romanian potential of sustainable development (National Institute of Statistics 2019). We support the idea that a proper image on the national indicators of rural development, human capital, and social disparities is also indispensable for the strength of the domestic administrative capacity and clarifying Romania’s position in the EU and the international standards of quality life. In this context, we start by acknowledging the 2030 Agenda as a global cooperation model to contribute to the development of quality of life indices. Its implementation could be a successful process of a significant transformation of a national socioeconomic model into a sustainable and developed one. We build our arguments by investigating the construction logic of three Romanian development strategies (between 1999 and 2018). We analyze how the EU accession and the adhesion to the objectives set in various development-related international documents (e.g., 2030 Agenda) have influenced Romania’s management capacity for this kind of strategic action. In other words, we are merely interested in answering the following question: to what extent did Romania’s ability to design and implement NSDSs on the rural development, human capital, and social disparities dimensions have changed/improved/evolved after the start of the EU accession process? We will follow a top-down approach, depicting the international, regional (EU-wide), and final domestic strategic visions of the sustainable development subject. Then, we analyze the three study cases to evaluate Romania’s capacity to plan and implement the latest three sustainable development strategies. We can use several theoretical models to analyze and implement the national strategy for sustainable development. From our perspective, in the investigation of this case study, one can focus on the studies’ conceptual framework dedicated to public policies’ Europeanization. Thus, once we establish that this analytical element represented by a national strategy is, as a field of study of Europeanization, at the confluence of policy with cognitive and normative structures (Radaelli 2003; Börzel and Risse 2003), it becomes of interest to look at the expected impact of this Europeanization process. In terms of the “goodness of fit,” given the context, one should expect an impact that would be at least in the accommodation area, seen as a moderate degree of change determined by the political and ideational change of peripheral items. This juxtaposition of European and national structures implies a higher degree of change where both peripheral and central items are modified due to the impact of the European intervening factor (Börzel and Risse 2003; Ion 2016). However, the data we have collected and analyzed indicate that there are not enough conditions to determine the change. In other words, although there exists low goodness of fit between the EU level and the national one in terms of designing and implementing strategic documents in the sustainable development area, the institutional capacity to produce change (the number of veto players in the political

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

135

system and the characteristics of executive power, agenda, tasks, etc.), the timing of European policies (use of the time factor to alter the speed of the Europeanization process), and the policy structure and advocacy coalitions (technocratic potential, discrepancies between stages of policy adoption and policy implementation, the presence of a legitimating discourse, the influence of the European factor on the domestic interest groups) (Radaelli 2003; Ion 2016) determine severe shortcomings at the domestic level. This assists only to a limited impact which can be better described at most as absorption, perceived as a low degree of change confined to the simple introduction of European political and ideational items at the national level, without a significant change (Börzel and Risse 2003; Ion 2016).

9.2  B  uilding a Domestic Strategic Approach for Sustainable Development From International… In the long history of UN documents dedicated to sustainable development (and the failures that have accompanied the implementation of some of these documents, if one thinks about the Millennium Development Goals), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has to be emphasized. From its very beginning, keywords are indicating a clear orientation toward action – “action plan,” “implement,” and “will stimulate action over the next 15 years” – besides the usual utopian declarations pointing to “strengthen universal peace” or that “no one will be left behind” when it comes to broader goals or principles of action. Briefly, it is a document that conforms to the latest – although not very recent anymore – UN philosophy on sustainable development and the move from intergenerational accent to the holistic perspective according to which SDGs “are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental” (United Nations 2015). These tridimensional vision of the SGDs should be completed with good governance (Sachs 2015). This pillar assures a proper implementation of the UN objectives in a context where different stakeholders (public, private, or nonprofit sectors) act at various jurisdictional levels (local, state, regional, international). Beyond the commonplace characterizations of the present time as simultaneously full of immense challenges and immense opportunity, there are although several exciting ideas: the recognition – albeit veiled – of the impractical character of the MDGs (and the need “to complete what they did not achieve, particularly in reaching the most vulnerable”) and the completion of the list of development priorities with those that indicate fluidization of the boundaries of economic, social, and environmental dimensions (United Nations 2015). Moreover, the national specificity is recognized in terms of agenda, capabilities, and context and the importance of achieving the objectives, assumed in the context of complying with international rules and commitments (United Nations 2015).

136

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

…to Regional… Since the beginning of the document, the EU announces that it has long been interested in SD, as revealed by the Treaties (European Commission 2016). Although this is true for the Lisbon Treaty, the idea evolved from Maastricht till Nice (European Union). The EU Sustainable Development Strategy appeared in 2001, being amended several times, and only in 2010, “sustainable development has been mainstreamed into the Europe 2020 strategy” (European Commission 2016). For this reason, the 2030 Agenda was readily compatible with the preexisting EU guidelines: “The EU’s answer to the 2030 Agenda will include two workstreams. The first workstream, presented in this Communication, is to fully integrate the SDGs in the European policy framework and current Commission priorities, assessing where we stand and identifying the most relevant sustainability concerns. A second track will launch reflection work on further developing our longer-term vision and the focus of sectoral policies after 2020, preparing for the long-term implementation of the SDGs” (European Commission 2016). The section on The European response to the 2030 Agenda is, therefore, realistic. However, as the EU input for achieving the 17 objectives is mentioned, several precautions appear to emerge from this phrase: “The instruments used to deliver on individual SDGs also depend on where the division of responsibilities lies between the EU and the Member States” (European Commission 2016). One should note here that the EU is interested in preserving its European social model and social cohesion. It links this intention in promoting the compatible vision of the SDGs, as emphatically is argued that “sustainability is a European brand” (European Commission 2016). Nevertheless, the document – taking into account the editor – is sensitive to the mandate assumed by the Junker Commission in charge at that time: “The contribution of the Commission’s ten priorities to the 2030 Agenda” (European Commission 2016). Its steering role is perceived simultaneously as an opportunity and a challenge. The Commission itself underlines the importance of governance as a binder of the three-dimensional space that SD must manage: “ultimately sustainable development is an issue of governance” (European Commission 2016). On the one hand, this sounds like a post-rationalized argument, as the Commission seemed to promote its Vice-President structure as a governance facilitator. On the other hand, the von der Leyen Commission acknowledged the SDGs’ importance and its role in attaining the objectives set by Agenda 2030: “Each Commissioner will ensure the delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals within their policy area. The College as a whole will be responsible for the overall implementation of the Goals” (President of the European Commission 2019). Thus, governance will provide a supranational level of political leadership, guiding the states to implement the dynamic reforms needed to achieve sustainable development goals. In this regard, the EU’s institutions can enhance the coherence of sustainability dimensions at all levels. For the EU community, the encouragement of multi-stakeholder coalitions for sustainable development through voluntary corporate code responsibility and accountability is of the utmost importance (European Commission 2017).

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

137

Environment Environment

Economy

Social Values

Economy Social Values

Environment

Economy

Social Values

Fig. 9.1  Good governance for sustainable development. (Source: Salsberg 1995)

The governance will also increase EU members’ capacity to develop their social dimension of national policies, thus ensuring cooperation with international agencies whose purpose will be to help achieve the EU SDS’s assumed objectives (Fig. 9.1). This type of mechanism will improve the cooperation and coordination with the systemic levels of EU governments, allowing to identify the syncope of the development process that impedes long-term goals. …and Finally to the Domestic Level Following the collapse of the communist system in Romania, the reform process has been determined by aligning with democratic Europe’s practices, especially with those within the European community. All former communist states followed a model of reform in their period of transition and modernization. Inheriting a tradition of centralized policies (Scrieciu and Stringer), Romania has considered the sustainable aspect of its transformation a part of the transition, 1999 being a decisive moment in terms of developing the first SDS. According to UN principles (United Nations 1987), Romania began to emphasize sustainability and sustainable development notions. Therefore, government institutions had tried to focus on rural development, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries as the economic recovery engine; on social inclusion and human capital development as an element of sustainability; and on combating wage disparities and strengthening vocational training capacity as a growth enhancer. After the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference in Brussels, Romania started the negotiations for accession to the European Union (Bîrlan-Popescu 2009), and the idea of transforming its socioeconomic levels became clearer. On this line, the structure of national development required progressive state intervention to replace the old socioeconomic order slowly by the new organization (Maragos 2004). These aspects are relevant through the contribution of public policies to national development. Thus, since now, the foundations of two cyclic decades of economic acceleration have been laid, the period during which the country “experienced 17 years of economic growth and only 2 years of decline” (Melenciuc 2019) (Fig. 9.2).

138

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

Environment Environment

Economy

Social Values

Economy Social Values

Environment

Economy

Social Values

Fig. 9.2  Real GDP per capita growth rate, by country, 2000–2015. (Source: European Union 2016)

The national authorities created or revised the assessment frameworks to highlight the progress in reaching the objectives of the NSDSs. This helped strengthen the managerial capacity of social infrastructure justified by the direct connection to the European objectives in international cooperation (Government of Romania 2008). Therefore, the organic incorporation of the principles and practices of sustainable development in all public programs and policies of Romania as a member state of the EU” (Government of Romania 2008) has become  – at least declaratively – one of the main concerns of the successive governments. The single element that stands out from this list of documents is Romania’s National Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 (RNSDS) adopted in 2018. When compared to the 1999 NSDS, there are clear differences in the editorial team’s accountability for the content, set objectives, data supporting the in-depth analyses, etc. (Government of Romania 1999a). Similarly, the 2008 strategy is assumed by an editorial board and positions itself within the EU’s commitments on sustainable development. It indicates specific challenges Romania has to face, setting three clear objectives (on the short, medium, and long term) to attain: “Horizon 2013: organic incorporation of sustainable development principles and practices in all the public programs and policies of Romania as an EU member state; Horizon 2020: achieving the current average level of the European Union countries at the main sustainable development indicators; and Horizon 2030: significant approximation of Romania to the average level of that year of EU member countries in terms of sustainable development indicators” (Government of Romania 2008). An analysis of SNDDR 2008 from integrating the priority environmental objectives is made by Todor (2014). Focused mainly on exposing the fragile pillar of environmental policies and the effects it has on a solid and credible national sustainable development approach (Todor 2014), Todor also offers a broader perspective on the 2008 strategic document, pointing that it fails to apply the sustainable development international/regional objectives to the peculiar domestic context. He also applied this aspect in the environmental sector, as the strategy’s basic philosophy was limited to synthesis and repetition of other national or international documents without prioritizing the various and numerous objectives connected to a sustainable developed society (Todor 2014).

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

139

The same shortcomings can also be found in the 2018 Romanian strategy, where real strategic guidelines are still lacking: the objectives are not adapted to the domestic context, state of the art is not correctly presented, and little attention is paid to the infrastructure or the support that different stakeholders might provide for effective implementation of the SD dimensions.1 From a non-dated document issued by the government of Romania, we found that the Department for Sustainable Development was established through the Government Decision no. 313/2017. However, the document is full of vanities like “The defining element of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development represents the full connection (emphasis added) of Romania to a new philosophy of European Union’s development and widely shared worldwide – that of sustainable development.” It also lacks a red thread. We learn something about the institutions involved without finding their real contribution to each chapter or access the meetings’ supporting documentation. However, it is the only document with clear objectives of the strategy and not the large ones borrowed directly from the Agenda 2030, even if these are the same objectives from the old strategy from which they removed the 2013 targets, without clarifying if they have been attained and without specifying what “significant advancing of Romania to the average level might mean” either for the Horizon 2020 goal (“Reaching the current average level of EU countries at the main indicators of sustainable development”) or for the Horizon 2030 one (“Significant advancing of Romania to the average level of that year of the EU member states from sustainable development indicators”) (Government of Romania). 1  In drafting the new strategy, the Romanian authorities also failed to take into consideration the experience of other older or newer EU member states which face the same challenge of integrating the SDGs in their policies. For example, without annexes, the Irish SD document has 35 pages, all with covers. The annexes are separate (indeed, almost 100 pages for annexes 1 and 2 containing objectives, responsible institutions and stakeholders for each SGD, as well as relevant national policies and key objectives). The vision, aim, and strategic priorities are announced from the beginnings; there are also presented the SDGs, the SD definition, and the road to current SGDs: a simple, unpretentious, clear, concise language and the role of Ireland in the negotiations for the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. An important part is the chapter dedicated to explaining the measurement of the success of each SDG implementation – emphasis on number of targets and specific indicators. The way in which Ireland refers to SDG, it also has a cursive nature: presentation of state of the art and, subsequently, presentation of the selected national themes according to which they will be grouped and implemented the 17 SDGs. Noteworthy are the chapters on budget and governance, the latter quite developed, as well as on stakeholder engagement or communications and awareness raising (Government of Ireland. The Sustainable Development Goals National Implementation Plan 2018–2020. Prepared by Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment. www.dccae.gov.ie/SustainableDevelopmentGoals. N.d.). In Latvia, the document regarding the implementation of the SDGs has a little over 60 pages, and it focuses on seven priorities clarified from the beginning, as the aim is to integrate the SDG vision within the domestic policy structure in aspects regarding hierarchies of responsibilities, schemes, indicators, budget, stakeholders, etc. The analyses of each SDG – state of the art – are relevant, with data, sometimes using a SWOT model (Cross Sectoral Coordination Centre, Latvia Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Report to the UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, 2018, www.pkc.gov.lv/en/Latvia-SDG-Review).

140

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

Focusing again on the 2018 strategy (Government of Romania 2018), little can be said about the vision and the core values. Taking into consideration the structure of the document  – first, presentation of the sustainable development concept at international, European, and national level; then a brief analysis on the current development level on the 17 SGDs and the national targets for Horizon 2020 and 2030; and finally a presentation of several action plans meant to support attaining the previously mentioned targets – one can notice that the sustainable development discourse is settled within the UN and EU narratives on the subject (also assumed by the authors of the strategy), with little variations/adaptations triggered by the national specific context. Nevertheless, suppose we are interested in understanding Romania’s capacity to plan and implement specific sustainable development frameworks. In that case, we developed a proper analysis of the so-called 2018 RNSDS. Here is a delicate discussion, considering that there is no evaluation of the 2008 objectives, but in fact, a noncritical takeover of the 17 SDGs; there is no real analysis on the accomplishment of the previous set objectives. Based on improper benchmarks for the SD context (e.g., the 2016–2017 purchasing power parity rise when compared to EU average and 2018 Eurobarometer optimism rates of the Romanian citizens when referring to their vision on the EU future), the authors of the 2018 RNSDS are, however, sure that Romania possesses the necessary basis for implementing the current strategies accordingly to the international objectives and commitments. Several other elements are also debatable. Firstly, the three identified issues of the strategy – economic, social, and environmental – are not the result of reliable national analyses pointing toward the conclusion that these should be fundamental action points. They are merely the pillars of any sustainable development strategy, as revealed by the international programmatic documents Romania subscribed to. A standard format is widely recommended to facilitate the comparison of various national strategies. Secondly, it is said that the strategy is “citizen-centered and focuses on innovation, optimism, resilience, and the belief that the role of the state is to serve the needs of each citizen in a fair, efficient, and balanced manner, all within a clean environment” (Government of Romania 2018) (English version). This is the official translation. It is slightly different than the Romanian original one: “citizen-centered” is not the same thing as “oriented toward the citizen” (Romanian version), as “the belief that the role of the state is to serve the needs of each citizen in a fair, efficient, and balanced manner, all within a clean environment” is not the same with “the confidence that the state serves the needs of every citizen, in a fair, efficient and clean environment, in a balanced and integrated way” (Romanian version). These are not merely translation mismatches, and one might say that it was created another type of message regarding the state’s role for the Romanian public opinion. In this context, one should also notice the strange option for the word “resilience.” It appears that it is using as a synonym for elasticity. At the same time, its proper meaning is “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape” (Merriam-Webster dictionary). Probably, the fact that some dictionaries use it as “the ability of an ecosystem to return to its original state after being disturbed” (Collins English Dictionary) might validate its inclusion in the strategy. However, a

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

141

document based only on keywords such as innovation, optimism, resilience, and faith in the state’s role is not very convincing. Thirdly, the details on the documentation and public consultation phases are minimal, and there is no clear evidence on the duration and structure of this process.

9.3  Romania in the EU, A Sustainable Approach? Sustainable development plays an essential role in the context of an increasing number of regional and international instruments and organizations engaging in the exploration of cooperation in the field of economy, transports, agriculture, or the environment. Concerns about sustainability and its implications over modern life were a continuous preoccupation since the European Coal and Steel Community’s establishment when the resource dearth and population rise were a significant preoccupation for the political leaders. The decades between the 1950s and 1970s were marked by the intensification of public concerns over the dynamism of economic and social dimension (Baker 2016), this determining, in one sense, a strong system of interdependences that have come to characterize the usage of cooperation mechanism on a regional and global scale. In this case, Romania is one of the EU’s oldest partners. Its relations date back to early 1967 (Bîrlan-Popescu 2009) when Socialist Romania joined the bilateral pact on cooperation in agriculture and industrial manufacturing sectors. After the resumption of relations with the West, with the fall of the communist regime, Romania took important decisions to strengthen its capabilities in countering socioeconomic threats. So, the idea of development is meaning the process of organizing the countries (particularly poorer ones) (Kingsbury 2008) and, also, conservation of living resources (Baker 2016). Starting from this primary source of understanding, the European community has created cohesive cooperation in the European system that overcame the gap stemming from the East to West and from the North to the South. Development issues played a limited role in European integration. Still, with the last three enlargement waves, the eligibility criteria defined by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 and completed by the Madrid European Council in 1995 launched a considerable challenge for the candidates, especially for Romanian. European Union has invested more resources in building a cohesive and robust union, which is why the ability to cope with the competitive pressure and market forces within the EU has been the main pillars of the direct accession negotiations in the European Union (European Union 2005). The enlargements of 2004 and 2007 were unprecedented, given the number of countries and the challenges represented by their accession. In 2000, Romania opened 31 negotiation files, managing to close all or part of the sectoral negotiations within 4 years. The country’s accession to the European Union took place under a derogation in eight defining areas: agriculture, transport, environment, energy, taxation, free movement of capital, free movement of

142

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

services, and competition (Bîrlan-Popescu 2009). This structure came to be the forefront of Romania’s accession process when the Romanian government introduced a national development system calling for regional and international cooperation and action to mitigate the damage of communism. Thus, Romania understood the need to establish a national framework for implementing reforms for sustainable development. For Romania, economic growth is an essential aspect of development. According to EU institutions, in 2014, the country had an extreme poverty risk in the rural regions (Istrate and Horea-Serban 2018). The authorities’ inability to take concrete measures for social inclusion directly affected the economic growth generated by the legal unpredictability and the numerous changes to the tax code and the labor code (Fig. 9.3). This factor explores issues of distribution of the resources and also the success of public policies. The social scoreboard of EPSR shows that economic growth “has translated into improved employment outcomes and resulted in a strong increase in disposable household incomes” (European Commission 2018a). Nevertheless, Romania still has a high level of poverty (Istrate and Horea-Serban 2018) and a rising school dropout rate, contributing to a negative social dynamic, especially the lack of a coherent social dialogue and limited labor inclusion. The development thinking has changed, and the aspect of successive reforms in education and social protection and the alignment of the labor law with the European legislation to reduce wage disparities and the strengthening of human capital by adapting to the labor market moved forward the modernization of the country. Also, the transformation of subsistence agriculture into a modern one, with additional

At risk of poverty rate

Share of population with under 60% of median equivalised

region/country

cities

towns and suburbs

rural areas

cities

towns and suburbs

rural areas

EU 28

16.4

15.8

20.2

6.8

4.9

5.6

Bulgaria

12.3

20.5

33.7

4.8

5.4

11.5

Romania

10.6

17.5

38.6

3.1

4.3

18

Hungary

6.6

12.5

21

2

4.5

8.1

Poland

9.6

14.7

24.1

3.2

3.6

10.2

Fig. 9.3  The proportion of the population at risk of poverty and proportion of the total population with less than 60% of the median income, by the degree of urbanization, 2014. (Source: Eurostat data quoted in (Istrate and Horea-Serban 2018))

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

143

valences, can be considered the essence of the transition to an inclusive society and a sustainable economy. Nevertheless, despite recent legislation improvements, particular groups of people are still socially unintegrated on the active labor market, mainly due to the low attainment level in basic educational skills in rural areas and poor Romanian communities. As much, broadening the definition of undeclared work and introducing more coercive measures against disguised employment, in the absence of conclusive measures of integration into the labor market, cause an increase in social exclusion because of income inequality and job loss. This situation persists in Romania even though the education system is mainly free and supported through public funding (Ministry of Environment 2018). Without an educational program adapted to the new economic challenges of the globalization era, the younger generations are not prepared to add value to some sectoral activity regions. At the same time, the already skilled workforce cannot offer productivity to the current standards. In this respect, the programmatic documents of national development are essential. These will show us the national authorities’ overall vision, and the EU’s official statistics are relevant for discovering the progress of transition toward sustainable development. According to the EU Commission, in 2016 approximately 10% of the low-­ income Romanian citizens did not feel the economic growth (European Commission 2018a). The in-work exclusion continues to be a structural problem for the national rural areas where a large percentage of the population has no official monetary earnings despite their self-employment in subsistence agriculture. This kind of problem is contributing to the deep exclusion of the rural population: young people, young families, and the Roma population (population found mainly in rural areas). According to this, the economic growth was the base of the first RNSDS, the development of the anthropic and agricultural capital representing the central theme of that strategy. At that time, the Romanian government managed to make an accurate inventory of the total agricultural area and the machinery and rolling stock in this field. In 1999, the country had about 23.8 million hectares, representing the primary employment source for over ten million Romanian citizens (Government of Romania 1999b). This strategy was a relevant and robust projection for developing the new national economy – an economy in the process of reconstruction with deficiencies, without modern technology, and with problematic practices regarding the conversion. Romania used to build its future development perspectives imitating the European conventions, so the 1999 SSD had offered a relevant political view to accelerating the implementation of the progress before the next SSD in 2008. In 2008 the new NSDS found that the first 10 years of accelerated development failed. This period is characterized by a delayed transition to a functioning market economy (Government of Romania 2008). If the 1999 NSDS offers the agricultural sector a new and modern legal framework, a considerable fiscal stimulus, supporting modern family farms, and the EU standards, the 2008 strategy found that all these measures failed to revitalize the agricultural sector.

144

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

For Romania, the agriculture sector plays an important role in its development in terms of aggregate income. The 2018 NSDS recognizes the fact that there are important links between the traditional and modern sectors (Government of Romania 2018). Therefore, “the contribution to poverty reduction takes place directly, through the effects of agricultural growth, on-farm employment, and profitability” (Dethier and Effenberger 2012). But as a member state of the European Union, Romania must align its agricultural exploitation practices with the community norms and standards. In those terms, since 1990, national authorities have been looking for solutions that can improve rural development in full respect of the environment. Thus, NSDS set out to increase the contribution to transport and energy infrastructure, under the conditions in which the official statistics from the level of 2009 show that over 3.5 million have used biomass for heating (National Institute of Statistics 2009). The goals of all NSDSs were to promote the preservation of natural resources and the conservation of the natural environment. The country’s accession to the EU obligated Romanian to continue the efforts to protect its ecosystems. Implementing the policies may reduce the socioeconomic gap (Government of Romania 2018). According to its European perspectives, Romania will fund action under all six EU rural development priorities – with a particular emphasis on the competitiveness of the agricultural sector and sustainable forestry (European Commission 2018b). These priorities should respect the objectives set by the Treaty of Lisbon: social stability, a competitive economy, combating social exclusion, and enhancing territorial cohesion (European Union 2019). For this, Romania can use more than nine billion euros for the EU budget, environmental protection, and climate change and stimulating economic development to be a defining ax for sustainable development. It is worth mentioning that Romania’s rural development strategy promotes the diversification of the rural economy (European Commission 2018b). The authorities are also proposing the development of competitiveness and restructuring the forest growing sector that has suffered from underinvestment and various offenses. Agriculture and natural resources were at the center of the national development field for many years. Even though other general or sectoral areas emerged in national strategies such as infrastructure, the disparity between rural and urban areas, or industrial policy, these two policy frameworks (agriculture and natural resources) remained at the center of domestic governance because they occupied a significant part of national growth (Nagy 2013). We can define the development of anthropic objectives and the implementation of national policies in this field as the authorities’ most significant concern in identifying the appropriate models for investments, innovation, and change of the agricultural political paradigm. Most trends of the development of the field were positive over the period 1999–2018 even if the rural regions of Romania continue to be unfit for the new European economic and development policy, which hinders the process of redefining state intervention but also the reforms in the other sectors targeted by the analysis. The below table reflects the principal approaches the three analyzed strategies had for the three case studies selected (Table 9.1):

Human capital

Defined human capital as an element of sustainability Tried to replace the old socioeconomic order Aimed to strengthen policies to improve the quality of life Emphasis on the (investment in the) professionalization of human capital

1999 NSDS Rural It intended to offer a framework connected/ development inspired to the European best practices in the field The field was the hardcore of the national strategy, in order to reconsolidate its share in the economy It was a priority, as ten million citizens worked in this sector Attempts have been made to rebuild the agricultural sector on modern principles and in accordance with the good practices of the time Sustainable rural development was assumed through imitation, the adaptability being extremely low Recognized the importance of reducing the socioeconomic gap

2008 NSDS It was a consequence of the official evaluations concluding that the measures taken by the first strategy had failed Recognized the importance of developing the agricultural sector Outlined the main points of the EU’s renewed sustainable development strategy Proposed new ways to accelerate rural development so that European funds could be used for the benefit of this sector Meant to reduce the degree of fragmentation of the agricultural area and to stimulate the concentration of small farms Aimed to increase the attractiveness of rural areas and to reduce the migration to urban areas Recognized the importance of environmental issues in the structure of rural development Militated for the protection of biodiversity Encouraged the implementation of policies meant to reduce the impact of demographic decline Encouraging employment and focused on higher education Recognized the positive developments in the field of employment, subsistence agriculture still occupying a large share

Table 9.1  A comparative view of the analyzed NSDS and study cases

Noted a decline in the quality of education and the high dropout rate Recognized the failure of previous strategies Aimed to increase funding and investment in specialized human capital training Proposed increasing the rate of access to education and the formation of an entrepreneurial culture in Romania

2018 NSDS Recognized the important links between the traditional and modern sectors Admitted that Romania needed to develop its vision on critical infrastructure Further attention paid to the development of the agricultural and forestry sector Proposed new solutions to increase the importance of environmental protection in agricultural holdings Recognized the importance of reduction of the socioeconomic gap

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy 145

Social disparities

1999 NSDS Noted the reduction in the birth rate and the problems to be faced by Romania in the future Stressed the need to increase funding for key sectors such as education and health system and emphasized the importance of increasing access to them Considered vital to improving the quality of life in the rural area

Table 9.1 (continued) 2008 NSDS Continued to approach in the same perspective the consolidation of the level of access to quality education and medical services Social inclusion became a priority Stressed the importance of creating a modern legislative, institutional, and participatory framework for reducing the risks of poverty and social exclusion, promoting social cohesion and equal opportunities Defined as a strategic priority improved access and participation in the labour market of vulnerable groups

2018 NSDS Recognized the small progress made in this area, continuing to consider access to education and health services as a priority Encouraged social inclusion by adopting compensatory measures for vulnerable groups and integrating them into the labor market Admitted the persistence of difficulties in the adaptability and harmonization of domestic legislation with the fundamental rules and objectives of the UN and the EU and proposed measures to promote equal opportunities and treatment for women and men Continued to promote the reduction of disparity in gender pay and elimination of risk factors: domestic violence, discrimination on ethnic or religious grounds

146 O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

147

9.4  W  hat Are the Perspectives for a more Inclusive Romanian Society? Social cohesion, equality between men and women, and equal opportunities are key elements in achieving sustainable development. However, in a transition economy characterized by discrepant development levels, it is very hard to build proper fields and domestic reforms to ensure effective resources for the disadvantaged categories that most often live in rural communities. Once with Romania’s accession to the EU, the national authorities agreed to respect the European Council’s political framework in 2006. Thus there were three specific pillars relating to the social inclusion strand: access for all resources, active social inclusion of all, and a well-coordinated policy and involvement of the relevant public actors in social reform (Eurostat 2009). The national SSDs include some steps that have to be taken for a sustainable impact and decisive progress on the reduction of the risk of poverty (Government of Romania 2008). The steps are based on the principle of including the population on the path of sustainable development, in particular by changing the mentality and identifying those embryos of social thought (Government of Romania 2008). The European Union’s strategy recognizes that between European regions persists a dysfunctional system of cooperation (European Union 2009). One in four inhabitants of Romania lived in a household whose incomes were lower than the threshold set at 60% of the median income available per adult equivalent (Iagăr 2015). Also, the regional differences in GDP per capita reflect disparities and a low degree of development, which affects the professional training of human capital. However, reforms and implementation of national programs to eliminate social disparities and poverty have borne fruit, according to statistics presented by the European Commission (European Commission and Eurostat 2017). However, the country still has one of the highest rates of people in poverty or social exclusion in the EU (European Commission and Eurostat 2017). To combat the adverse effects of poverty and the rate of disparity, Romania aims to adapt its labor market, making it much convergent with the European one (Government of Romania 2018) and increasing enrollment in minors’ education system in vulnerable categories. According to the 1999 strategy, the lack of policies to encourage birth, the repopulation of rural societies, and the development of the educational and medical infrastructure were significant issues in accelerating the rate of social disparities (Government of Romania 2008). In 2008, the governmental strategy also recognized the same issues as a form of domestic governance flop (Government of Romania 2008). In this connection, Romanian assumes a rather ambitious goal for 2030 to reduce the rate of early school leaving in the educational system and increase youth generation skills by reforming society’s education system and sustainable development (Government of Romania 2018). Unfortunately, the transition to an inclusive society has not ended. Romania is a country that has not yet achieved some coherent and positive regulations on social-­ economic development. The goals of action remain a priority for the national stakeholders and the country’s international economic partners, this being a feature of the Southeast European region.

148

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

9.5  Conclusions This chapter has investigated what extends Romania’s capacity to design and implement NSDSs on rural development. Human capital and social disparity dimensions have changed/improved/evolved after the EU accession process. Our findings indicate that Romania still has a long way to pass from a mere accommodation with European and international standards to a concrete transformation of its policies and practices to ensure substantial, sustainable development of citizens despite some punctual amelioration. For example, the European Commission in its latest review of the environmental implementation states, in aspects regarding Romania, that the country needs to strengthen the integration of all the dimensions of sustainable development within the domestic policies (European Commission 2019) in the delicate context of an insufficient institutional structure able to support the SGD focus (European Commission 2019).2 Here, we underline the limited progress to improve rural areas’ life quality and disadvantaged groups of the population. The national regulations are a brake of progress achievement of the structural objectives of NSDS as an effect of underdevelopment of the public consultation procedures and the role different stakeholders might have in supporting the implementation of varying SDG segments. Despite a proposal for an objective mechanism endorsed by the social partners, reviewing procedures and follow-up processes integrating the feedback received is not present in the projection of national regulations determining a low development predictability level. The domestic administrative regulations’ changes led to the amplification of gap development between the east-west-south-north ax. Even if the GDP increased in most countries in the region, most benefits concentrated on these societies’ withier tier. This holds back the implementation of essential policies across many sectors. Although national strategies have been supported by some progress regarding poverty reduction and sustainable development, for certain groups of the population, the goals of NSDSs have not been completely met. This was because the subsequent strategies were not built on proper evaluation and a logical consequence of the previous ones. The inter-cross relations between economic development and social inclusion suggest that the national authorities should set ambitious but achievable goals to develop their social policy implementation mechanisms by working with all the actors directly involved. Simultaneously, the three development strategies analyzed fail to provide optimal solutions for implementing public policies that diminish the harmful effects of poor management of natural resources and human capital. Even if Romania can access and learn from other countries’ various acceptable practice examples, the national authorities continue to implement its plan chaotically. This has adverse effects on the national socioeconomic mechanisms: Romania has the largest diaspora displaced abroad due to socioeconomic factors 2  See also Department for Sustainable Development, Raport de activitate 2017 (Activity Report 2017), 2017, http://dezvoltaredurabila.gov.ro/web/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/RAPORT-DEACTIVITATE-DDD-2017.pdf.

9  Romania’s Capacity to Plan and Implement a Sustainable Development Strategy

149

and continues to access the European funds for development inefficiently (accordingly to the European Structural and Investments Funds portal) and to finance from its own fund’s projects without general impact on those three issues analyzed (Ioniță et al. 2018).

References Baker, S. 2016. The Concept of Sustainable Development. In Susteinable Development. Routledge, 21–66. New York. Bîrlan-Popescu, L. 2009. România și Uniunea Europeană. In Construcția Uniunii Europene, 76–81. București: C.H. Beck. Börzel, T.A., and T. Risse. 2003. Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe. In The Politics of Europeanization, ed. K.  Featherstone and ClaudioM Radaelli, 57–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dethier, J.-J., and A. Effenberger. 2012. Agriculture and development: A brief review of the literature. Economic Systems 36: 175–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecosys.2011.09.003. European Commission. 2016. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Next steps for a sustainable European future. European action for sustainability. ———. 2017. Good governance for sustainable development. ———. 2018a. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Central Bank and the Eurogrup. 2018 European Semester: Assessment of progress on structural reforms, prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances, and results of in-depth reviews under Regulation (EU) No 1176/2011 ———. 2018b. Factsheet on 2014–2020 Rural Development Programme for Romania. ———. 2019. Commission Staff Working Document – The EU Environmental Implementation Review 2019. Country Report – Romania. Accompanying the document Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Environmental Implementation Review 2019: A Europe that protects its citizens and enhances their quality of life. European Commission, and Eurostat. 2017. Smarter, greener, more inclusive?: Indicators to support the Europe 2020 strategy. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Union. 2009. Sustainable development in the European Union. Monitoring Report On Progress Towards The SDGs in an EU Context. European Union. 2016. Sustainable development in the European Union  :A statistical glance from the viewpoint of the UN sustainable development goals. 2016th ed. Luxembourg: Publications Office. ———. 2005. Treaty concerning the accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union. Bruxelles. ———. 2019. Goals and values of the EU. https://europa.eu/european-­union/about-­eu/eu-­in-­ brief_en. Accessed 5 Dec 2019. Eurostat. 2009. Sustainable development in the European Union: 2009 monitoring report of the EU sustainable development strategy. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Government of Romania. 2008. Strategia Națională pentru Dezvoltarea Durabilă a României. ———. 1999a. Romania: National sustainable development strategy. Bucureşti: Coresi. Government of Romania Comitetul de redactare a Strategiei Naționale de Dezvoltare Durabilă a României. Government of Romania. 2018. Strategia Națională pentru Dezvoltare Durabilă 2030 – Document adopted by the Romanian Government on 9 November 2018 through Government Decision 877/2018. ———. 1999b. Strategia Națională pentru Dezvoltare Durabilă.

150

O.-A. Ion and C.-G. Done

Iagăr EM (coord). 2015. Dimensiuni ale incluziunii sociale în România. INS. Ion, O.-A. 2016. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches of Europeanization. State of the Art. In Studying Europeanization. Different Theoretical Lenses and New Methodological Approaches, ed. O.-A. Ion, 13–49. Bucharest: Tritonic. Ioniță, S., O.  Nuțu, and S.  Pârvu. 2018. Guvernarea de tip bazar. Costurile clientelismului in administratia locala si companii de stat. Istrate, M., and R. Horea-Serban. 2018. The dynamics of poverty and its consequences on regional inequalities in Romania. Eastern Journal of European Studies 9: 63–86. Kingsbury, D. 2008. Introduction. In International Development. Issues and Challenges, ed. J. McKey, J. Hunt, M. McGillivray, and M. Clarke. New York: Palgrave. Maragos, J. 2004. A Post-Keyynesian Approach to the Transition Process. Eastern Economic Journal 30: 441–465. Melenciuc, S. 2019. Romania’s economy facing uncertain end to two-decade growth cycle. Business Review. http://business-­review.eu/money/br-­analysis-­romanias-­economy-­facing-­ uncertain-­end-­to-­two-­decade-­growth-­cycle-­194160. Accessed 30 Nov 2019. Ministry of Environment. 2018. Romania’s Voluntary National Review 2018. Nagy, O. 2013. Agricultura si Produsul Intern Brut. Legaturi Econometrice. Academia.edu. https:// www.academia.edu/13288253/Agricultura_si_Produsul_Intern_Brut._Legaturi_Econometrice National Institute of Statistics. 2019. Dimensiuni ale incluziunii sociale în România în anul 2018. ———. 2009. Consumurile energetice în gospodării în anul 2009. President of the European Commission. 2019. Mission letter addressed to Frans Timmermans Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal. Radaelli, ClaudioM. 2003. The Europenization of public policy. In , ed. Claudio M. Radaelli and K. Featherstone, 27–56. Oxford: The Politics of Europenization. Oxford University Press. Sachs, J. 2015. The age of sustainable development. New York: Columbia University Press. Salsberg, L. 1995. Frameworks for promoting sustainable development. In Kirklees Metropolitan Council (KMC) Local Agenda 21 and Transport: Processes and Mechanisms for Change  – Report of Seminar, KMC Environment Unit. Huddersfield: KMC. Scrieciu Șerban, Stringer L.  The Transformation of Post-Communist Societies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: an Economic and Ecological Sustainability Perspective. European Environment. Todor, A. 2014. Consideraţii despre Strategia Națională de Dezvoltare Durabilă. In Analize de politici publice cu impact asupra mediului şi dezvoltării durabile, 103–107. Bucharest: Wolters Kluwer. United Nations. 2015. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, A/RES/70/1. ———. 1987. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Oana-Andreea Ion is lecturer at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA), Bucharest, Romania, and holds a Ph.D. in political sciences. Since 2008, she has been involved as manager or expert in various projects on proper design and implementation of public policies, especially in the educational and sustainable development sectors.  

Cătălin-Gabriel Done was born in Bucharest on February 28, 1996, and in 2018 obtained a bachelor’s degree from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA), Bucharest. After this, in 2020, he earned a master’s degree in international relations and European integration in the Department of International Relation and European Integration, NUPSPA, with full marks. Cătălin-­Gabriel worked closely with the “Theodor Herzl” Center for Israeli Studies – NUPAPS, and ESGA. In the present, he is a Ph.D. student at Naples University in the Political Studies Department.  

Chapter 10

Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy Natalia Cugleșan

Abstract  The positive rates of post-accession compliance with EU legislation exhibited by the member states of the 2004 and 2007 accession waves raise the question of the factors that have influenced this unexpected relatively positive record compared to the old member states. In this context, this chapter aims to examine Romania’s post-accession compliance behavior in environmental policy. It addresses the factors that have shaped Romania’s post-accession compliance with environmental legislation as it has benefited from long-term transitional arrangements. I argue that conditionality has played a significant role in the successful closing of the accession negotiations, notably chapter 22 Environment, having in mind that Romania managed to align its legislation following the European rules but needed extended deadlines for problematic areas of the environment, where adjustment pressures were high due to financial and administrative costs. In the post-accession stage, the European Commission’s monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms through the infringement procedures have been a defining variable in explaining Romania’s good transposition record. Thus, this study seeks to contribute to the implementation literature focused on the critical case of Romania. It aims to shed light on the new member states’ implementation behavior by evaluating Romania’s performance in the area of environment, more than 10 years after the accession to the EU.

10.1  Introduction The implementation and enlargement scholarship argues that the states which have joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 and 2007 display good transposition rates with EU law or even outperform the old member states (Sedelmeier 2016). This claim countervails the more negative expectations that in the absence of N. Cugleșan (*) Department of International Studies and Contemporary History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_10

151

152

N. Cugleșan

conditionality, the new accession states will be affected by compliance fatigue or even by a world of revenge (Falkner and Treib 2008). However, despite this positive record, which showed that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have continued to comply with EU law even in the absence of carrots and sticks policy game played by the European Commission, the question arises if these states show the same positive pattern of compliance at a closer examination of key policy areas. Why is the environmental policy a critical case of analysis? Even if it is one of the most studied policy areas in the implementation literature (Toshkov 2011), the focus on the countries belonging to Central and Eastern Europe, so far, has benefited from limited attention in the implementation literature. Only a few qualitative studies connected the issue of environmental policy with the case of Central and Eastern European states. Second, quantitative studies examining the performance of the old member states (EU-15) versus the new member states (EU-27) dominate the research agenda of the compliance and implementation literature; third, few works devote attention to cross-country comparative studies in policy areas between or within the states of the most critical accession waves: the big-bang enlargement of 2004 and the accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007. This volume addresses the Europeanization of the environmental policy in Romania after the accession to the European Union. As underlined by the editors of this volume in their introductory piece, the question of EU member states’ performance in the field of environmental policy is highly relevant, mostly as the EU has built to a great extent in these last 20 years its identity as a global norm setter in the field of environmental policy. In this sense, this chapter investigates the 2007 enlargement wave. It aims to explore if Romania has complied with environmental legislation in more than a decade of EU membership or has continued to be further defined by its negative reputation of laggardness, specifically during the accession times. First, there is consensus among EU policy-makers and academic scholarship that Romania and Bulgaria’s accession represented one of the most challenging enlargement rounds in EU accession history. Both countries faced tremendous difficulties in the accession period due to unfavorable domestic conditions. The problem of the unfinished transition and resistance to democratization, a political elite connected to the old communist regime or what (Gallagher 2009) labeled as skilled political predators, and the widespread corruption phenomenon represent arguments in this direction. Second, they have faced similar problems and were detached from the enlargement wave of 2004 due to the lack of political will and capacity to carry out the reforms. Despite a broad scholarship on the new member states’ implementation performance, uneven distribution in the number of academic papers examining the 2007 enlargement persists, compared to previous enlargement rounds. Authors have been keen to analyze the big-bang enlargement wave by employing quantitative approaches and comparing the new member states versus the old member states. The majority of studies cover the transition period from communism to democracy or focus on the first years after the accession of Romania but fail to cover the more recent developments in the transposition and enforcement of environmental law.

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

153

Third, the environmental area represented a critical area due to the heavy industrialization of communist times and its effects on the environment and benefited from extended transitional arrangements of the environmental acquis. Implementation deficits were expected to take place. Accordingly, this chapter aims to examine what is the state of play in the area of the environment as Romania had benefited from long-term transitional arrangements. The choice to evaluate the first decade of EU membership allows us to capture its implementation behavior for a more extended period. In line with the argumentation presented above, it addresses the following research questions: what factors shape Romania’s post-accession compliance behavior in the field of environment? I argue that conditionality has played a significant role in the successful closing of the accession negotiations, notably chapter 22 Environment, having in mind that Romania managed to align its legislation following the European rules but needed extended deadlines for problematic areas of the environment, where adjustment pressures were high due to financial and administrative costs. In the post-­ accession stage, the European Commission’s monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms through the infringement procedures have been a defining variable in explaining Romania’s good transposition record. Thus, this study seeks to contribute to the implementation literature focused on the critical case of the enlargement wave of 2007. It aims to shed light on the implementation behavior of the new member states by evaluating their performance in the field of environmental policy, more than 10 years after their accession. This paper is structured as follows: in the next section, I review the literature on the factors explaining the transposition and enforcement outcome, by looking at the transformative role played by the European Union in the accession and post-­ accession stage but also by highlighting the importance of domestic factors as explanatory variables in understanding the response of Romania to EU legislation. The next section will briefly summarize the role and legacy of conditionality and Romania’s challenges in transposing the EU environmental law. The last section of the chapter looks at the overall performance in the area of environment in Romania after 2007.

10.2  W  hat Are the Factors that Shape Post-accession Compliance? Research on Post-accession Compliance The issue of post-accession compliance of the EU member states has attracted a prolific scholarship, with crucial contributions from the Europeanization, enlargement, or the implementation literature. This issue of how member state responds to EU policies in the implementation stage has remained, throughout the years, a salient issue in the field of EU Integration Studies but was given a new boost by the enlargement waves from 2004 and 2007, with the accession of 12 new member states. Highly emblematic was the case of the countries from Central and Eastern

154

N. Cugleșan

Europe, which opened up new research on the compliance behavior of the new member states, as these states experienced domestic conditions, which caused more hurdles than advantages when it came to the transposition and enforcement of EU legislation. This section will briefly review the scholarly contribution to the factors driving (non)compliance. The contributions of the academic research scholarship in the field of compliance are grouped along three lines: (a) meta evaluations of the implementation scholarship, (b) a body of research focused on the role played by the European Union in fostering transposition and enforcement of EU law, and (c) scholarly work on the domestic factors, as explanatory variables. According to Toshkov (2011, p. 5), in his metareview of compliance research, the new member states have been on the radar of the implementation scholarship. A significant number of case studies are dedicated to the new accession states. This view is also supported by other scholars, like Angelova et al. (2012), who, in their synthesis of research on compliance with EU directives, show that a significant number of quantitative studies explore the countries that have joined the EU enlargement waves of 2004 and 2007. Toshkov and Angelova et al. fail to reveal whether there is a gap in the number of studies examining the 2004 and 2007 enlargement waves, and if so, how severe are these discrepancies? When it comes to the role played by top-down factors, the academic literature stresses the role played by the EU governance. Discussed will be the role played by conditionality and the post-accession monitoring mechanisms. First, a key factor is attributed to the role played by conditionality during the accession negotiations. Kristoph Knil and Jale Tosun state that the dirigiste governance style applied to the candidate states has significantly influenced the organizational culture and institutional arrangements during the accession stage (Richardson 2012, p.  327). Sedelmeier (2016, p. 6) reinforces this perspective and argues that states have consolidated their administrative capacity. The legacy of conditionality fosters favorable conditions for post-accession compliance as states learn that compliance is the expected behavior. In contrast with these optimistic assumptions, a more pessimistic stance is embraced by other scholars who argue that in the absence of conditionality, the EU will be stripped of its pressure mechanisms and the new member states, having secured their strategic objective of joining the EU, will display a negative implementation behavior, what Falkner and Treib (2008) define as a world of revenge or dead-letter regimes. On the same note, but using a different line of argument, Orru and Rothstein question the legacy of conditionality. They show that old regulatory communist practices have been reinforced rather than overcome, contradicting the more positive conditionality outcome. In their research on the implementation of the Drinking Water Directive in Estonia and Lithuania, they conclude that states resort to what is called a blind eyes policy, choosing to implement rules that fall under the watchful eye of the EU but deciding to neglect the more pressing issues which require their attention and action (Orru and Rothstein 2015, pp. 12–14). This is similar to the perspective proposed by Henrik Selin si Stacy D. Van Deveer, who also questions the value of conditionality and emphasizes that sometimes “states respond selectively and on paper and without altering more fundamental norms and practices” (Selin and Van Deveer 2015, p. 13).

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

155

Second, countries like Romania and Bulgaria represent a particular case and represent exceptional cases. Due to the fact they were the first countries in the enlargement history of the EU which had to accept the extension of conditionality after 2007, through the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), an instrument specially designed for the enlargement countries of 2007, it has led to good compliance rates, as shown by the quantitative research. In this context, Trauner showed that the European Commission gained new opportunities to continue to exert pressure (Trauner 2009) on the countries of the enlargement wave of 2007 by using the CVM as a naming and shaming instrument. On the other hand, many studies pointed out the lack of effectiveness of this instrument in fostering change. They advocated for the need to be supplemented with other mechanisms like issue linkage. Sedelmeier shows that as Romania and Bulgaria were not admitted into Schengen but were eager to join, there was ample room for the Commission to play this card with success (Sedelmeier 2014, p. 113). Thirteen years later, Romania and Bulgaria continue to be monitored through the Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification, demonstrating the shortcomings of this instrument. Turning to the domestic factors, a consistent body of scholarship emphasizes the internal factors triggering compliance or disrupting the implementation process. One of the frequently invoked aspects of implementation scholars is the willingness and state capacity to implement the EU policy legislation’s provisions. In his book, Constructing a Policy-Making State, J. Richardson argues that policy implementation varies across policy sectors. The member states’ disposition and capacity to respond in a compliant manner to EU legislation depend on the European Union’s adjustment pressure. The higher the misfit and pressure, the more the state will play the implementation game, blocking the EU law (Richardson 2012, pp. 314–315). This argument is related to the rational choice approaches, which claim that a cost-­ benefit behavior governs states in implementing EU law. The costs of compliance as a significant variable are highlighted by U. Sedelmeier, which argues that for countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the compliance costs are higher than for the old member states due to the misfit between EU norms and regulations and domestic policies (Sedelmeier 2016, p. 8). A second crucial explanatory variable tested in the compliance and implementation literature is administrative capacity. As stressed by the European Commission in the monitoring reports, the Romanian administration’s shortcomings risked jeopardizing EU legislation implementation even in the post-accession stage, contributing to the EU implementation deficit. This empirical reality was also backed by the EU studies literature with case studies examining the challenges of state-building with institutions on reformed and competent bases and accompanied by merit-based recruitment practices, due to the communist legacy (Dimitrova 2002), clientelism, and corruption which were deeply entrenched practices. This is one of the issues that has not been solved in the pre-accession stage and was likely to continue to affect the implementation of the EU rules even after 2007. Substantial attention also receives other independent variables that affect the compliance outcome. Scholarly works emphasize the role played by the veto players who can act as gatekeepers when their preferences and interests do not converge

156

N. Cugleșan

or are in contradiction with EU rules (Sedelmeier 2016); especially when the implementation costs are high, these actors will play an essential part in leading to delays in the transposition of legislative provisions. In the environmental sector, it is expected for the industry to exert pressure on the national governments and try to set the agenda and convince the parties in the government of their preferences. Toshkov argues that government coalitions are likely to be affected by noncompliance (Toshkov 2008), while Versluis shows that the participation of green parties in coalition governments contributes to better transposing the EU legislative measures in the field of environment (Spendzharova and Versluis 2013, p. 14). Finally, constructivists have also an essential contribution to the compliance literature. They argue for the case of learning and socialization. They claim that the use of material sanctions does not entirely guide the new member states’ positive compliance record through the infringement procedures (Grabbe 2014, p. 44), but it emerges due to the internalization of EU norms. A second argument is that political actors comply with EU rules due to the use of EU norms by networks of actors, with NGOs as key players, to create pressure on governments to comply with EU norms (Checkel 2001). As weak civil societies characterize postcommunist countries, robust activism and political mobilization are imperative if they are to become reliable and effective partners of the EU Commission to monitor compliance with EU law. Falkner and Treib argue that given these pessimistic realities in the new member states, many cases of noncompliance remain undetected (Falkner and Treib 2008, p.  5), while Dimitrova and Buzogány find ground for more optimism by showing that NGOs in Romania have been successful in exploiting EU norms to limit state capture in the forestry sector (Dimitrova and Buzogány 2014, p. 152). It has to be underlined that the trust in EU institutions and the EU’s perceived legitimacy are vital determinants for triggering the pressure of implementing EU norms by private actors and citizens. In this sense, Romania and Bulgaria are still ranked high among EU-27 in citizen support for the EU. Does mobilization happen in any circumstances, or is it influenced by the salience of the issue? This matter was raised by several scholars, who question if the priorities on the citizen’s agenda coerce the authorities to exhibit a more compliant behavior and to be more responsive and accountable toward public matters. This is not always the case, as seen in Romania, e.g., on the anti-corruption issue, where the government seemed to be deft to the massive political protests of 2017. However, Spendzarova and Versluis have tested the value of the salience variable in the transposition of EU environmental legislation in ten new member states and conclude that the public support for environmental issues played a positive role by speeding up the transposition of EU environmental directives (Spendzharova and Versluis 2013, p.  15). This section has examined the most relevant top-down and bottom-up factors which have been advanced by the compliance research scholarship as explanatory factors.

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

157

10.3  T  he Legacy of Conditionality and the Compliance with EU Legislation After 2007 This chapter argues that due to the high number of transitional arrangements which Romania inherited from the negotiation accession, the specific problems of the transition which continued to affect both countries after 2007, it was expected to experience difficulties in the post-accession stage when it came to the transposition and implementation of EU environmental legislation. In the context of the accession negotiations with Romania, chapter 22, Environment, proved to be a strenuous effort. Romania had to transpose more than 200 legal acts (European Commisssion 2004, p. 117) in the field of environmental law, which required substantial investments and efficient national administrative structures. It is not a surprise that the legacy of conditionality in the area of environmental law has consisted of transitional arrangements, which were agreed with the European Commission, showing the modest performance achieved between 2000 and 2004. As shown in Fig.  10.1, Romania occupies the first place in a negative ranking among Central and Eastern European countries, displaying a low-­ performance record and benefiting from 18 transitional arrangements in industrial pollution, water quality, air quality, and waste management, with Bulgaria following closely, with 9 transitional periods (European Commisssion 2004). As stressed by the European Commission in the 2004 Regular Reports on progress toward accession, Romania needed to consolidate further the administration which was understaffed and needed continuous training as well as assigning financial resources and making the environment a priority on the policy agenda (European Commisssion 2004, p. 119) to maintain and improve the compliance rate in the post-­accession stage.

Fig. 10.1  Transitional periods requested by the Central and Eastern Europe accession states. (Source: European Commission, Comprehensive monitoring reports on the preparation for membership, 2004)

158

N. Cugleșan

The modest transposition record in the field of environment achieved by Romania in the pre-accession stage can be explained by the fact that it had to transpose more than 80,000 pages of the acquis, and the environment represented only one of the priorities out of the 31 chapters it had to secure between 2000 and 2004. Critical Areas: Waste Management In the final year of the accession negotiations with the EU, waste was one of the issues that had to be prioritized by the Romanian government, as evidenced by the 2004 Regular Report of Romania’s progress toward accession. Having a substantial impact on human health and the environment, the European Commission recognized the existence of financial resources as a precondition for progress in this area; thus, it has assigned 127 million euro for environmental projects (European Commission 2004, p. 11). The European Commission stressed throughout the years, from the 1997 Opinion to the annual monitoring reports (2000–2004), that Romania had to assign financial resources, consolidate the administration and coordination capacity, and improve the staff’s expertise. With a slow pace of reforms and requesting six transitional periods in waste management, it is not surprising that the Romanian authorities were not successful in closing this chapter by the end of 2004. The environment was not an exceptional situation. Romania was experiencing problems completing two additional chapters of the community acquis, Competition Policy, and the Judiciary, a new expression of the laggardness syndrome. Also, 2 years later, in 2006, with 1 year before the accession, the Report of the European Parliament on the accession of Romania to the EU urged Romania to continue to make efforts in the implementation of environmental legislation and mentioned the case of management of waste from extractive industries (European Parliament 2006). In the field of waste management, by analyzing the European Commission’s data in the Monitoring Reports, Romania emerged as the state with the highest number in transitional arrangements (6), with Bulgaria occupying the second place with four transitional periods. Both countries are in strong contrast with the Central and Eastern European states of the 2004 big-bang enlargement wave, which only requested one transitional period, except Poland. What was the state of play after 2007? According to the World Bank, the most pressing issue Romania had to deal with in the post-accession stage was the issue of solid waste management, especially in the area of landfill waste, where Romania had specific intermediary targets to meet and was supposed by 2015 to close 150 municipal landfills and 1500 illegal dump sites and build 30 solid waste management systems (World Bank 2011, pp. 11–13). This issue is also raised in the EU Country Report-Environmental Implementation Review in Romania (European Commission 2017, p. 8), showing that Romania has low recycling (5%) and high landfilling (82%). This evaluation highlights that it has not made significant progress to meet the 2020 standards. Due to the weak capacity to implement the waste management strategies, the coordination problems between the national and local level in the area of waste management, and the costs associated with meeting EU norms, Romania was referred in 2014 to the CJEU for failing to close down more than 68 municipal landfills of waste in accordance to Directive 1999/31/EC. Romania

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

159

was also referred to the Court of Justice for failing to comply with the 2008/98/EC Waste Framework Directive on adopting National Waste Management Plans. Still, all four infringement cases were closed without financial penalties.

10.4  G  eneral Evaluation on the Transposition of the Environmental Policy After 2007 The European Commission was not very optimistic when it came to the positive post-accession evolution of Romania and Bulgaria. The dominating view in Brussels not only was that they were unprepared for membership and “came in too early” (Grabbe 2014, p. 45). Given the volume of the environmental legislation the states of the fifth enlargement wave had to comply with, overall, Romania has complied with the transposition of the legislation; in the aftermath of accession, Romania had to focus its attention and efforts on transposing more than 100 directives (124) that had to be applied by January 1st or by December 31st (European Commission 2008), while 2008 was mostly reserved for the transposition of overdue directives and their transposition in the national legislation, with approximately 23 directives set for 2008 and 2009. Romania faced difficulties due to the short periods the governments had at their disposal to adopt government decisions (GD) and emergency ordinances (EO), and they often did not fully transpose the directives, and completion with other GD or EO was needed. In the transposition process, Romania favored the role played by the governments in the transposition of EU law, as the adoption through the parliament implied more extended periods, especially in the case of a bicameral parliament system, where each chamber had its own adoption pace, plus the additional deadline for aggregating the solutions adopted by the two chambers of the parliament. Hence, it is not surprising that at the level of 2007, Romania failed the timely transposition of 45 directives, but all infringement proceedings were closed in 2007. The reason behind the small numbers of infringement proceedings that were open by the European Commission in 2007 in accordance with the high number of directives that had to be transposed is explained by the long periods Romania had at its disposal to comply with the EU provisions. The transposition process was initiated shortly after the start of the accession negotiations when chapter 22 Environment was open. Also, the first 4  years of EU membership have been particularly marked by efforts to comply and implement the new legislation adopted after Romania has joined the EU and meet the intermediary targets established for the transitional arrangements in the area of water or air quality. However, similar to other EU member states, Romania was the object of infringement cases, in particular, due to the low administrative capacity and lack of sufficient expertise of the bureaucrats employed in the national administration. Hence, the infringement proceedings opened against Romania were caused by late transposition or lack of conformity

160

N. Cugleșan

and wrongful application. These findings are in line with other scholarly works focused on implementing environmental policy in the new member states, as identified in the study of Michael Baun and Dan Marek in the case of the Czech Republic (Baun and Marek 2013). The infringement proceedings show that the European Union has acted as a political game-changer (Zeff and Pirro 2015, p. 393), empowering citizens to exploit the use of EU norms. In 2012, a local NGO, the Ecologic Collaboration Group (NERA), was active for more than 10 years in monitoring and pressuring the national authorities to adopt the necessary measures and end human health and environmental damage through the extractive mining pollution in Moldova Nouă.1 NERA Ecological Group dissatisfied with the new episodes of pollution in Moldova Nouă and with the lack of progress in implementing Directive 2006/21/CE after the rule of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the infringement case against Romania, which set a new deadline for August 2018, declared that they would notify the Commission on the breach of EU law (Romania Curata 2019). This particular case shows that civil society groups can be active players and partner up with the Commission in notifying the breach with EU law and create pressure on the national authorities to comply with EU law. Although it was a case of transnational pollution, there is no evidence that there was coordination between Romanian civil society groups from Romania and Serbia. As the case of this infringement file resulted from citizens’ complaints, this case shows that Europeanization has begun to produce effects on Romanian citizens’ civic engagement. If 1 year after the accession, in 2008, environmental protection was important only for 40% of Romanian citizens (Special Eurobarometer, 2008, p. 11), in 2011, 89% of Romanian citizens believed that individual citizens could play an essential part in protecting the environment (Special Eurobarometer 365 2011, p. 17). Also, Romania ranks third among EU-28 when it comes to trust to the EU in environmental issues (Special Eurobarometer 365 2011, p. 94). These findings align with the scholarly works on the postcommunist transition and Standard Eurobarometer, which showed that Romanian citizens trusted more European institutions, as democratic consolidation was produced from above. And not lastly, the empowerment argument is also supported by the protests of 2014 against the extraction of gold by the Canadian Goldmine Corporation from Roșia Montană by using cyanides, which gave rise to a civic movement (Zeff and Pirro 2015, p. 394). Examining the realities after 2010, we can identify positive developments in the new member states’ response in the transposition of environmental policy provisions. Romania has settled and closed the cases before being referred to the Court of Justice; between 2011 and 2017, only six cases (Romania) were referred to the EU Court of Justice, as shown in Table  10.1. The infringement cases against 1  The case envisaged the dust pollution in the city of Moldova Nouă (western Romania) through the Boșneag decantation pond, which belonged to Moldomin, a state mining company. The infringement procedure reached the final stage, and Romania was referred to the Court of Justice due to noncompliance by wrongful application with Directive 2006/21/CE on waste management from extractive industries.

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

161

Romania contradict the argument found in the academic literature that political actors like national governments, parliaments, or the administration will act as gatekeepers, trying to prevent any adjustments or transformation of their administrative traditions and will resort to deliberate opposition in the transposition of the directives, when adjustment pressures are high (Falkner et al. 2004, p. 453). These results are more consistent with the line of reasoning that the EU member states are governed by rational choice behavior, functioning in the logic of cost-benefit analysis (Checkel 2001). The pressure exerted by the European Commission through the infringement instrument as a sanctioning mechanism has contributed to the Europeanization of administrative structures, even if some authors have questioned this line of argument, preferring to advance the concept of shallow Europeanization (Dąbrowski 2012). Of course, these data tell only the story of the moderate formal transposition success. Still, the enforcement and application are closer to the model advanced by Falkner et al., a “world of dead-letters” (Falkner and Treib 2008). Trauner also supports this argument, who finds that the Romanian and Bulgarian law enforcement vulnerabilities and the quality of governance might compromise EU law application in the post-accession stage (Trauner 2009, p. 5). The picture painted by Trauner has been a constant feature of Romanian governance in the first 10  years of EU membership.

10.5  Conclusion This chapter has set out to map Romania’s post-accession evolution in environmental policy in the first 10 years of EU membership. It aimed to explore how it has mastered environmental provision compliance to examine if EU legislation, which mainly consisted of EU Directives, was transposed correctly and in due time. It has argued that faced with the prospects of the unfinished transition, after the historical moment of 2007 which marked its return to Europe, Romania managed to Table 10.1  Romania’s achievements in the field of environmental policy Criteria Infringement procedures referred to the Court of Justice of the EU Open infringement procedures Reporting on the number of transposed directives Information requested through the EU pilot project Monitoring of priority measures Monitoring of overdue measures

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 0 0 0 0 3 1 1

13

5 6

12 7

11 25

14 13

9 9

10 6

14

18

10

6

7

7

3

84 20

55 29

60 40

79 42

28 35

– –

– –

Source: European Commission, Annual reports on monitoring the application of EU law (2011–2017)/Annual Reports of the Romanian Ministry of Environment (2011–2017)

162

N. Cugleșan

achieve a general compliant behavior in the area of environment, even if the structural deficiencies of its governance architecture did not provide a favorable context for a smooth transposition and enforcement of the EU legislation. The generally positive results on the transposition of environmental legislation are mainly the effects of conditionality, followed by the top-down pressure mechanism of the infringement procedure in the post-accession stage and Romania’s rational choice behavior responsive to the EU pressure. The area of waste management proved to be problematic as it had to comply with a substantial amount of legislation in the post-accession period, and the environment was only one policy sector that had to receive policy-makers’ attention. Second, waste management required vast financial resources and investments, political will, and effective bureaucracies (see also Chap. 2). Given this context and the negative experience of the transition years, it was difficult for Romania to overcome the misfit between EU environmental policy and domestic norms very early on in their new capacity as new member states; infringement proceedings targeted Romania due to noncommunication, late transposition, or wrongful application, which supports the argument of the lack of effectiveness of the bureaucratic structures and lack of insufficient expertise. Encouraging is the positive role of the citizens and the emerging civil society that have been willing to partner up with the Commission and closely monitor the implementation of EU law. To sum up, this study has investigated Romania’s post-accession compliance behavior in the field of environmental policy. Further research is needed to examine the performance in other areas of the environmental policy where it has benefited from consistent transitional arrangements and where administrative pressure and costs are high: industrial pollution or water quality.

References Angelova, M., T.  Dannwolf, and T.  König. 2012. How Robust Are Compliance Findings? A Research Synthesis. Journal of European Public Policy 19: 1269–1291. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13501763.2012.705051. Baun, M., and D. Marek. 2013. The Implementation of EU Environmental Policy in the Czech Republic: Problems with Post-Accession Compliance? Europe-Asia Studies 65: 1877–1897. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2013.848639. Checkel, J.T. 2001. Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change. International Organization 55: 553–588. https://doi.org/10.1162/00208180152507551. Dąbrowski, M. 2012. Shallow or Deep Europeanisation? The Uneven Impact of EU Cohesion Policy on the Regional and Local Authorities in Poland. Environment  and Planning C: Government and Policy 30: 730–745. https://doi.org/10.1068/c1164r. Dimitrova, A. 2002. Enlargement, Institution-Building and the EU’s Administrative Capacity Requirement. West European Politics 25: 171–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/713601647. Dimitrova, A., and A. Buzogány. 2014. Post-Accession Policy-Making in Bulgaria and Romania: Can Non-state Actors Use EU Rules to Promote Better Governance?: Post-accession policy-­ making in Bulgaria and Romania. JCMS. Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12084.

10  Romania and Post-accession Compliance with EU Environmental Policy

163

European Commission. 2017. COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT.  The EU Environmental Implementation Review Country Report – ROMANIA. ———. 2008. Commission report on monitoring the application of EU law. Eur. Comm.  – Eur. Comm. https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/2008-­commission-­report-­monitoring-­ application-­eu-­law_en. Accessed 25 Oct 2020. European Commisssion. 2004. 2004 Regular Report on Romania’s progress towards accession. European Parliament. 2006. REPORT on the accession of Romania to the European Union  – A6–0421/2006. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference =A6-­2006-­0421&language=EN. Accessed 2 Nov 2020. Falkner, G., M. Hartlapp, S. Leiber, and O. Treib. 2004. Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor? West European Politics 27: 452–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/0140238042000228095. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States. JCMS J Common Mark Stud 46: 293–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14 68-­5965.2007.00777.x. Gallagher, T. 2009. Romania and the European Union: How the Weak Vanquished the Strong. In Manchester University Press. New York: Manchester. Grabbe, H. 2014. Six Lessons of Enlargement Ten Years On: The EU’s Transformative Power in Retrospect and Prospect: Six lessons of enlargement ten years on. JCMS. Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 40–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12174. Orru, K., and H.  Rothstein. 2015. Not ‘Dead Letters’, Just ‘Blind Eyes’: The Europeanisation of Drinking Water Risk Regulation in Estonia and Lithuania. Environment  and Planning A: Economy and Space 47: 356–372. https://doi.org/10.1068/a130295p. Richardson, J., ed. 2012. Constructing a Policy-Making State?: Policy Dynamics in the EU. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Romania Curata J 8 aprilie 2019. 2019. Poluarea de la Moldova Nouă oferă „spectacol” în Serbia (video). In: Rom. Curată. http://www.romaniacurata.ro/poluarea-­de-­la-­moldova-­noua-­ofera-­ spectacol-­in-­serbia-­video/. Accessed 4 May 2019. Sedelmeier, U. 2016 Compliance after conditionality: Why are the European Union’s new member states so good?. http://userpage.fu-­berlin.de/kfgeu/maxcap/. Accessed 25 Oct 2020. ———. 2014. Anchoring Democracy from Above? The European Union and Democratic Backsliding in Hungary and Romania after Accession. JCMS. Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12082. Selin, H, and SD.  Van Deveer. 2015. EU Environmental Policy Making and Implementation: Changing Processes and Mixed Outcomes. Special Eurobarometer 295. 2008. Attitudes of European citizens towards the environment. Special Eurobarometer 365. 2011. Attitudes of European citizens towards the environment. Spendzharova, A., and E.  Versluis. 2013. Issue salience in the European policy process: what impact on transposition? Journal of European Public Policy 20: 1499–1516. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13501763.2013.781802. Toshkov, D. 2011. The quest for relevance: Research on compliance with EU law. 23. ———. 2008. Embracing European Law: Compliance with EU Directives in Central and Eastern Europe. European Union Politics 9: 379–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116508093490. Trauner, F. 2009. Post-accession compliance with EU law in Bulgaria and Romania: A comparative perspective. European Integration Online Papers. https://doi.org/10.1695/2009021. World Bank. 2011. World Bank, Solid Waste Management in Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania: A Cross-Country Analysis of Sector Challenges Towards EU Harmonization, 2011. World Bank. Zeff, E., and E.B. Pirro. 2015. The European Union and the Member States. 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

164

N. Cugleșan

Natalia Cugleșan  is a lecturer in the Department of International Studies and Contemporary History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babeş-Bolyai University. She received her Ph.D. in international relations and European studies from Babeş-­Bolyai University. She teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in the field of European studies (European Union policies, multi-level governance in the EU, etc.). Her research interests are linked to European governance and EU policies. Dr. Cugleşan is the recipient of several grants from the European Commission: Jean Monnet Module Multi-level Governance in the EU and Digital teaching and learning in the field of EU Integration Studies in the new member states (D-skills).

Chapter 11

Formal and Output Europeanization Arpad Todor

Abstract  This chapter structures the most relevant conclusions of the case studies reunited to tackle this volume’s central theme, the Europeanization of environmental public policies of an EU member state with a poor environmental policy track record and a lower administrative capacity. I present the most important conclusions drawn by each chapter and how the main findings can be interpreted from the theoretical perspective offered by the most influential theories of Europeanization. In the second section, I analyze the main general implications of the findings of this volume on the literature on Europeanization and the main contributions of the volume. I explain the limitation of conditionality and the EU’s capacity-building efforts and the post-accession use of infringement procedures. Also, I underline the persistent effects of the limited “goodness-of-fit” Romania’s environmental policies and capacities, the problematic institutional decision-making capacity, and administrative capacity.

11.1  Introduction Europeanization of member state’s public policies, both in terms of transferring key decisions to the European level and an adaptation of EU policies by its members (Richardson 2012), is key to deepening the EU integration. In this volume, we aimed to reunite a series of policy studies on a member state that had to put the most effort into this process. Romania became a member of the EU among the latest (Croatia became a member in 2013) and thus was among the countries with the least contribution to the existing EU environmental acquis. Also, since the environmental policies were not very important previously, and implementing the acquis posed extreme challenges, it required the highest number of transitional agreements with A. Todor (*) Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Todor, F. E. Helepciuc (eds.), Europeanization of Environmental Policies and their Limitations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68586-7_11

165

166

A. Todor

the longest periods. More than 20 years after the EU accession negotiations started and almost 14 years since becoming a member of the EU are a reasonable period to evaluate the effectiveness of Europeanizing Romania’s environmental public policy. These conclusions are structured as follows: first, we present each chapter’s main conclusions, the peculiarities of different policy fields, and the explanatory models that appear to be the most relevant. Then, we elaborate on the commonalities across the studies in this volume. Third, we discuss the implications of the synthetic conclusions of studies of this volume on the literature on Europeanization. Then, we draw some conclusions in terms of the essential explanatory models useful to interpret the explanatory factors for the Europeanization of Romania’s environmental public policies, understood as achieving success in policy implementation. Fourth, we elaborate on the main contributions of this volume to the literature in the field. Focusing on municipal waste management, Chap. 2 showed how the policy solution shoes to create a municipal waste management system locked the existing operators, both private and locally owned, the local, country, and national authorities in a structure where their incentives were misaligned. It also shows that even if compliance is linked with easy monitoring, infringement measures can only act as a deterrent if they affect the administrative level that bears the brunt of the effort in the actual policy delivery. Overall, this misalignment resulted in the limited administrative capacity of Intercommunity Development Associations (IDAs) to operationalize the county-level integrated waste management system (IWMS). Thus, no progress in achieving the Accession Treaty targets like closing non-compliant land fields, limiting landfilling and recycling, has been achieved in the last 10 years. The forest management analysis discontent over the destruction of some of Europe’s last virgin forests in Chap. 3 showed that changes in the property structure, incoherent policies, and limited enforcement caused by administrative inefficiency limit progress in protecting the forests. The air quality analysis in Chap. 4 showed that the misfit between the national approach to policy monitoring and the requirements of Directive 2008/50/EC made it impossible to adequately implement the policy given a superposition of factors: a limited allocation of financial resources for up-to-date instruments for monitoring and training, low administrative efficiency, limited interagency coordination and lack of clarity in agency responsibility, the limited environmental culture of the population, and presence of veto players that block the implementation of the legislation. The Environmental Fund’s transversal environmental public policy in Chap. 5 showed the essential instrument’s limited administrative efficiency designed to enforce environmental policy through taxation and funding environmental programs. The persistent functioning performance under the forecasted parameter represents a relevant factor explaining Romania’s incapacity to improve its environmental performance consistently. Chapter 6 analyzes the policy’s development that brought the most significant revenues to the Environmental Fund and funded the most important program, the scrappage program. The chapter shows that the initial policy solution and the subsequent adaptations were not compliant with the EU’s continuous legislative

11  Formal and Output Europeanization

167

modifications. Finally, the drop of the tax prevented a significant positive effect as an environmental policy. The green public procurement legislation and implementation analysis in Chap. 7 scrutinize the sluggish progress in achieving this policy’s aims. It shows the mechanisms through which the GPP law somewhat has an unintended effect of discouraging green procurement. The lack of legal clarity and the diminishing administrative incapacity of the institutions that should use this legislation are advanced as the main explanation for this policy failure. The analysis of the implementation of the 2009 “pesticide package” by Romania in Chap. 8 as an avenue to promote more environmentally sustainable agriculture shows that while the formal requirements have been generally met, success is limited. Progress in adopting alternative methods like low-risk MBCA, implementing IPM, and promoting organic farming in the National Action Plans adopted after 2009, as well as other strategic documents, is still limited. Romania’s capacity to operationalize sustainable development planning through its sustainable development strategies is discussed in Chap. 9. The analysis shows that the latest strategy has adapted only to a limited degree to avoid the first strategy’s failures. It also reveals that Romania still have difficulties in accommodating and implementing European and international standards to achieve more sustainable development. The essential variables that directed Romania’s performance in complying with EU environmental acquis are analyzed in Chap. 10. Cugleșan proves that Romania accomplished a good performance in compliance with the EU’s environmental policies, notwithstanding significant shortages caused by governance architecture and limited enforcement capacities. Despite the significant variety of the environmental policy approaches in the chapters of these volumes, many commonalities have emerged. Unfortunately, except for meeting the formal transposition requirements in some areas, the chapters have identified no environmental policy field where moderate success in terms of policy outcomes has been achieved.

11.2  Theoretical Implications The chapters’ analysis in this volume confirms the assumption that Romania had one of the least “goodness-of-fit” with the EU acquis systems in most environmental areas. Thus, it could not have met the requirements without any effort to create an administrative capacity that never existed before. Despite sensible progress in most areas analyzed in the chapters of this volume, Romania is still years ahead in achieving a sensible “goodness-of-fit” in most policy areas. Unfortunately, some of the factors identified by Buzogány (2009) as affecting Romania’s capacity to implement environmental remained relatively unaltered even more than a decade. The most important of these factors are the limited importance of the Ministry of Environment, the inappropriate staffing and low salaries of the personnel from the Ministry of Environment and subordinate agencies, the limited enforcement

168

A. Todor

capacity, lack of coordination among various levels of administration and agencies, and command-and-control approaches to transposition. Chapter 5, focusing on one of the main instruments designed to enforce Romania’s environmental policies by taxing activities that affect the environment, allows for a cross-sectoral evaluation of the efforts to enforce compliance. Data in Table 5.2 on the evolution of tax receipts show that the only tax that was firmly implemented until it was ruled as noncompliant with the EU directives was the first matriculation tax, a tax that also had an industrial policy aim. Instead, enforcement of taxation in areas as diverse as waste management, pollution, first matriculation tax, wood and wood materials, tires, or hunting was limited. For the rest, limited income indicates minimal enforcement relative to the tax base, and huge annual variations point to the legal framework’s limited effectiveness and the Environmental Fund’s Administration (EFA). This situation’s persistence systematically affects Romania’s capacity to enforce its environmental policy and capacity to achieve the targets set in the Accession Treaty and subsequent EU acquis. Overall, progress has been achieved in most environmental policies, to put it in the words of Falkner and Treib (2008), Romania’s effort in terms of achieving compliance “world of incremental change.” The slow progress in Europeanizing Romania’s environmental policies is not attributable to limited European Union’s perceived legitimacy, as Romanians are some of the most euro-optimistic citizens of the EU. Generally, there is a political consensus on the value of being a member of the European Union. The period of EU accession negotiations between 2000 and 2005 brought an essential upgrade in Romania’s capacity to translate the acquis into the national legislation and start the operationalization of the institutions and policy instruments to operationalize the legislation. Nevertheless, the failures in policy implementation identified in each chapter showed that the administrative capacity built during the period when the EU’s accession conditionality for accession gave it the maximum leverage adapted to allow Romania to meet the formal requirement of EU membership. Instead, this administrative capacity was much less enough to bring substantive policy changes or build the organizational capacity to implement complex environmental regulations. The chapters’ findings identified that except for some cases of delays for adopting various parts of the EU environmental acquis, Romania proved a rather cooperative member of the EU. This socialization process was not enough to change the capacity to design policies that would operationalize the acquis (Braun 2014). Despite the recent progress in promoting policy innovation, combining participatory and multilevel governance for policy implementation (Newig and Koontz 2014), Romania seems to be prone to maintain a command-and-control approach to policy implementation in most fields. As of 2020, there is still no sign of the emergence of nonhierarchical new modes of governance involving nonstate actors as an alternative approach to improve Romania’s capacity to implement the environmental acquis (Börzel 2009). Indeed, Romanian civil society’s voice has become more important in environmental policies, especially with the street protests regarding Rosia Montana. Nevertheless, we found evidence that a potential EU strategy to increase compliance is by encouraging member states’ environmental NGOs access

11  Formal and Output Europeanization

169

to national courts in parallel with the Commission’s centralized enforcement only in the case of first matriculation tax (Hofmann 2019). Appealing to the European Court of Justice was an important factor in forcing the change of the first matriculation tax and its subsequent abandonment, but not significant in speeding up building the required administrative capacity in other environmental policy areas. The only area where the policy solution involved the cooperation of the country-­ level authorities (County Council) with the local authorities and national ones was municipal waste management. Since the Intercommunity Development Associations (IDAs) created under the supervision of the County Council had a limited administrative capacity and were prone to blockages and delays by various veto players, they could not operationalize the integrated waste management system (IWMS). This raises questions on governance’s right approach in operationalizing such complex policies, especially when the capacity has to be created from almost scratch. European Commission’s evaluations of the state of implementation of the environmental acquis by Romania in most fields prove accurate. The Environmental Implementation Review confirms Bondarouk and Mastenbroek’s (2018) argument regarding the European Commission’s interest to increase its capacity to hold MS accountable. Given that the European Commission’s reaction through infringement procedures has been consistent, we can argue that the EU uses its enforcement capacity and exercises an important deal of pressure. The EU-level complexity of directives in terms of length, latitude, and timing of adoption does not appear to explain variation in implementation. Neither European Commissions’ capacity and intensity to detect noncompliance and impose sanctions appears to represent important explanatory variables across the policy field analyzed in this volume (Kaeding 2008; Toshkov 2008). In light of this volume’s findings, Schreurs’s (2005) argument that the EU has demonstrated substantial environmental policy-building capacity across all member states proved very optimistic. Commission’s power to employ pre-accession conditionality and assistance and the negotiations of some lengthy transition periods (Börzel and Buzogány 2019, p.  232) have allowed Romania time to delay the achievements of some critical targets, especially in municipal waste management, where Romania’s goals were quantified in the Accession Treaty. The long transition period was not used efficiently. By its expiration in 2018, Romania’s progress in some key areas has rather stalled. Also, Hedemann-Robinson’s (2016) argument that the EU has increased its capacity to enforce environmental policies through secondary legislation and provisions to strengthen national-level environmental inspections does not appear relevant in the case of Romania. The analysis in Chapter 4 identified no evidence that Environmental Funds’ Administration was an institution of interest of the European Commission as a tool to enforce environmental taxation and thus changed the structure of incentives in some of the most problematic areas like waste or pollution. As stressed in Chap. 2, the analyses in this volume confirm that Cugleșan’s argument that (2019, p. 1) “pre-accession conditionality and post-accession sanctioning mechanisms coupled with social learning through the internalization of norms” is relevant for explaining Romania’s performance in formal compliance. Also,

170

A. Todor

Sedelmeier (2016, p. 24) argument that compliance can be achieved in the case of “weak states with governments supportive of European integration, in combination with either an efficient mechanism to coordinate EU affairs or a lack of domestic veto players” is relevant in Romania’s record on formal compliance. Also, Börzel and Sedelmeier (2017) and Börzel and Buzogány’s (2019) argument that the European Commission has opted for less burdensome regulations, incremental amendments, and the development of new instruments to strengthen member states’ implementation capacity has only limited effectiveness in the case of Romania. Across all environmental policy areas analyzed in this volume, operationalizing environmental policies proves impossible without administrative capacity. The general conclusions that can be drawn based on the similarities observed across the various policy areas under analysis tend to confirm Angelova et  al.’s (2012, pp. 1274–1278) finding that the institutional decision-making capacity and “goodness-of-fit” are powerful explanatory models across different policy areas. Nevertheless, in Romania’s case, the variable that appears in all cases relates to the limited administrative efficiency. The chapters of this volume showed the limited “goodness-of-fit” of Romania’s environmental policies and capacities at the moment of EU accession. These differences are relevant regarding all operationalizations in the literature, either as “policy misfit” (Borzel 2000), structures of national interest groups (Duina 1997), the “the challenges that transnational rules pose on the policy legacies and interest group organization” (Duina and Blithe 1999), or the financial effort required for compliance (Falkner et  al. 2005). In all policy areas that required intensive interagency coordination at various levels, we found relevant Marek et al.’s (2017) explanatory model combining “goodness-of-fit” and administrative capacity explanations. Many problems stem from the multilevel requirements of implementing and placing heavy burdens on municipalities and intensive cooperation between the national and local levels. Given that Romania opted for a fast rubber-stamped adaption during the accession negotiations, the inter-ministerial coordination, approach proposed by authors like van den Bossche (1996) or Mastenbroek and Kaeding (2006), did not prevented a timely and relatively adequate adoption of directives. Nevertheless, limited coordination capacity caused issues in terms of policy implementation. Thus, Orru and Rothstein’s (2015) argument regarding the “blind-eye” Europeanization style appears closest to explain Romania’s good record on formal compliance. While Romania did focus on those rules that can be monitored by the EU, there the analysis in most chapters indicates that efforts were undertaken to meet the policy outputs. Still, progress was stalled many times by the structural problems and the limited administrative capacity inherited from the communist regimes. Given that the studies in this volume did not focus on a cross-sectional point in time but analyzed the dynamic evolution of policy implementation across the entire period after EU accession, it provides particular analytic leverage. Thus, it can overcome the two limitations of the EU’s environmental policy implementation literature, the policy specificity and dichotomous compliance vs. noncompliant approach (Bondarouk and Mastenbroek 2018). First, regarding the case specificity and focus

11  Formal and Output Europeanization

171

on specific directives’ provisions, we compared evolutions in very different policy fields, covered by the EU acquis to very different degrees and tied to map for commonalities. It shows that the same shortcomings tend to appear consistently across various policy fields. Second, regarding the evaluation of policy success in dichotomous terms of compliance vs. noncompliance, we have defined policy implementation as avoiding infringement procedures and achieving implementation performance (Bondarouk and Mastenbroek 2018). While these authors define implementation performance in terms of policy outputs, one of the advantages of the analytic approach used in this volume is that policy success includes policy outcomes in their definition whenever feasible. This approach shows that a country can learn to meet the formal criteria for acquis’ implementation and put into place the policy outputs in terms of substance, scope, and effort. The desired policy outcomes could still be far away. This change of optic leads to a different policy recommendation. The approach proposed by authors like Börzel and Sedelmeier (2017), Börzel and Buzogány (2019), Cugleșan (2019, p. 1), and Sedelmeier (2016, p. 24) offers a relatively optimistic view on the Europeanization of East European’s environmental policies. In the line of the argument advanced by Orru and Rothstein (2015), this volume suggests that a focus on policy outcomes reveals that less progress has been achieved, and renewed efforts are required. It also indicates that the policy solution to implement the policy would focus on creating the capacity to meet the formal requirements and less on the policy outcomes. Another contribution of this volume came through its comparison of environmental policy differently covered by the EU acquis. We covered the most minutiae described policy in the Accession Treaty, the waste management, to air pollution, to areas with an acquis that became more stringent after accession, like forests. We also covered areas covered indirectly covered by the EU acquis like green procurement, environmentally friendly agriculture, and scrappage program. If the expectation coming from the monitoring and enforcement literature was that in the more detailly regulated areas, we should observe more efforts and progress; this expectation was not confirmed.

References Angelova, M., T.  Dannwolf, and T.  König. 2012. How Robust Are Compliance Findings? A Research Synthesis. Journal of European Public Policy 19: 1269–1291. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13501763.2012.705051. Bondarouk, E., and E. Mastenbroek. 2018. Reconsidering EU Compliance: Implementation performance in the field of environmental policy. Environmental Policy and Governance 28: 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.1761. Börzel, T.A. 2009. Environmental Policy and the Challenge of Accession. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 32–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

172

A. Todor

Borzel, T.A. 2000. Why there is no “southern problem”. On environmental leaders and laggards in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 7: 141–162. https://doi. org/10.1080/135017600343313. Börzel, T.A., and A.  Buzogány. 2019. Compliance with EU environmental law. The iceberg is melting. Environmental Politics 28: 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2019.1549772 . Börzel, T.A., and U. Sedelmeier. 2017. Larger and more law abiding? The impact of enlargement on compliance in the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 24: 197–215. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2016.1265575. Braun, M. 2014. EU Climate Norms in East-Central Europe. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 52: 445–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12101. Buzogány, A. 2009. Romania: Environmental Governance — Form without Substance. In Coping with Accession to the European Union: New Modes of Environmental Governance, ed. T.A. Börzel, 169–191. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Cugleșan, N. 2019. Post accession compliance with EU environmental legislation in Romania and Bulgaria in the first ten years of EU membership. Conditionality and social learning, as drivers of success? Denver, Colorado. Duina, F. 1997. Explaining Legal Implementation in the European Union. International Journal of the Sociology of Law 25: 155–179. https://doi.org/10.1006/ijsl.1997.0039. Duina, F., and F.  Blithe. 1999. Nation-states and common markets: The institutional conditions for acceptance. Review of International Political Economy 6: 494–530. https://doi. org/10.1080/096922999347146. Falkner, G., and O. Treib. 2008. Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States*. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 46: 293–313. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-­5965.2007.00777.x. Falkner, G., O. Treib, M. Hartlapp, and S. Leiber. 2005. Complying with Europe: EU harmonisation and soft law in the member states. Cambridge University Press. Hedemann-Robinson, M. 2016. Environmental Inspections and the EU: Securing an Effective Role for a Supranational Union Legal Framework. Transnational Environmental Law 6: 31–58. Hofmann, A. 2019. Left to interest groups? On the prospects for enforcing environmental law in the European Union. Environmental Politics 28: 342–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401 6.2019.1549778. Kaeding, M. 2008. Lost in translation or full steam ahead: The transposition of EU transport directives across member states. European Union Politics 9: 115–143. Marek, D., M. Baun, and M. Dąbrowski. 2017. The challenge of implementing European Union environmental law in the new member states: The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive in the Czech Republic and Poland. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35: 1117–1135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X16686071. Newig, J., and T.M.  Koontz. 2014. Multi-level governance, policy implementation and participation: the EU’s mandated participatory planning approach to implementing environmental policy. J Eur Public Policy 21: 248–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2013.834070. Mastenbroek, E., and M. Kaeding. 2006. Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit: Domestic Politics in the Forefront. Comp Eur Polit 4: 331–354. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave. cep.6110078. Orru, K., and H.  Rothstein. 2015. Not ‘Dead Letters’, Just ‘Blind Eyes’: The Europeanisation of Drinking Water Risk Regulation in Estonia and Lithuania. Environment and Planning A. https://doi.org/10.1068/a130295p. Richardson, J., ed. 2012. Constructing a Policy-Making State?: Policy Dynamics in the EU. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Schreurs, M. 2005. Environmental Protection in an expanding European Community: Lessons from past accessions. In EU Enlargement and the Environment: Institutional Change and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. J.  Carmin and S.D.  VanDeveer. Psychology Press.

11  Formal and Output Europeanization

173

Sedelmeier, U. 2016. Compliance after Conditionality: Why Are the European Union’s New Member States So Good? Berlin. Toshkov, D. 2008. Embracing European law: Compliance with EU directives in Central and Eastern Europe. European Union Politics 9: 379–402. van den Bossche, P. 1996. In Search of Remedies for Non-Compliance: The Experience of the European Community. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 3: 371–398. https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X9600300404. Arpad Todor  is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the master’s program in environmental studies and sustainable development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project, Consolidating and promoting Romania’s position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European level. He obtained a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from the European University Institute and a Ph.D. in political science from NUPSPA, as well as a master’s degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA and a master’s degree in political science within the CEU.  He was the country coordinator in the Willing to pay? project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013–2015 he was the executive coordinator of the Constitutional Forum. His publications can be accessed at https://snspa.academia.edu/ArpadTodor