Ecologic Institute

This year there is even more reason than usual to celebrate: 15 years of successful work at the Institute and the 50th consortium project within the research framework programmes of the European Commission. In addition to this, we are able to welcome our 100th colleague to the Ecologic team with the arrival of Prof. Dr. Christoph Stefes. Ecologic Institute will be celebrating all of this on Wednesday the 1 September 2010, starting at 6pm at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) at Gendarmenmarkt in the Berlin-Mitte district. Read more ...

This article, which is co-authored by Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer of the Ecologic Institute, introduces a special issue of the journal International Environmental Agreements on environmental policy integration (EPI) at the international level. Referring to the integration of environmental concerns into other, non-environmental policies, the concept of EPI has been applied at national and EU-level but has rarely been analysed in relation to the global arena. Read more ...

22 February 2010, Singapore - Ingmar von Homeyer
In this presentation Ecologic Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer provided an overview of the development of EU environmental governance from the early 1970s up to the present. He argued that EU environmental governance can be described as an amalgam of four to five environmental governance regimes which have successively been layered on top of each other over the past 35 years. Read more ...

The 6th Environment Action Programme (6EAP) lays out the framework for the EU’s environmental policy-making for the period 2002-2012. With this period now drawing to a close, the Ecologic Institute, together with the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Central European University (CEU), is providing the European Commission with an in-depth assessment of the achievements of the 6EAP to be fed into the European Commission’s final assessment of the programme. Read more ...

G20 governments should end their perverse fossil-fuel subsidies, which contribute directly to climate change, cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and create artificial barriers to sustainable development, urges to the Green Economy Coalition. Ecologic Institute is a coalition member. Read more ...

22 April 2009, Washington DC - Ingmar von Homeyer
In this presentation Ecologic Senior Fellow Ingmar von Homeyer provided an analytical overview of EU environmental governance from the early 1970s up to the present. He argued that EU environmental governance can be described as an amalgam of four to five environmental governance regimes which have successively been layered on top of each other over the past 35 years. Read more ...

Access to information on the environment is an indispensible precondition for effective environmental policies. If this access is denied, neither the public sector nor the private sector is capable of making environmentally sound decisions. Willing to complement the EU’s efforts to grant such access, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) promotes environmental policy cooperation between the EU and its Eastern and Southern neighbours. To support the effort, the European Commission has issued a guide to EC horizontal environmental legislation for its European neighbours and Russia. Read more ...

30 January 2009, Maastricht - Ingmar von Homeyer
Ecologic Senior Fellow Dr Ingmar von Homeyer gave a lecture on the challenges of implementing EU environmental framework directives. The lecture was part of an expert-workshop on recent developments in EU environmental policy. Ingmar von Homeyer explained the distinctive implementation requirements of different types of EU environmental framework directives. Read more ...

Valuing both the environment and the changes in the level of environmental quality is of central importance to environmental policy formulation, as it puts the costs of obtaining certain environmental goals into perspective. In this article, which was published in the December 2008 issue of “Ökologisches Wirtschaften”, Holger Gerdes and Anneke von Raggamby propose a methodology to assess the policy impacts of environmental valuations. Read more ...

The conference "EU Environmental Policy and Governance: The Challenge of Climate Change and beyond" was held on 20 - 21 June 2008 at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. Organised by the EUI Alumni Association in co-operation with Ecologic Senior Fellow Dr. Ingmar von Homeyer and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), the conference focused on emerging trends in EU environmental policy and governance, including interactions with energy policy and EU economic competitiveness, in particular the goal of a competitive low-carbon economy. Read more ...

14 January 2008, Amsterdam - Anneke von Raggamby
Integrated sustainability assessment is a key element for advancing sustainable development by assessing the economic, environmental and social impacts of policy proposals. While the EU Commission has committed to producing high quality impact assessment, Anneke von Raggamby evaluates the availability and actual use in EU Commission Impact Assessment practice at the OECD workshop on Sustainable Assessment Methodologies. Read more ...

19 June 2007, Madison - Ingmar von Homeyer
This presentation provided an analytical overview of EU environmental policy from its beginnings in the early 1970s up to the present. He showed that EU environmental governance today must be understood as an amalgam of four environmental governance regimes that have successively been layered on top of each other over the past 35 years. The evolution of EU environmental governance began with the “environmental regime” which was later followed by the “Internal Market regime”, the “Integration regime”, and the “Sustainable development regime”. The four regimes can be distinguished analytically in terms of their overall political priorities, legal foundations, decision-making methods, types of justification, underlying political dynamics, environmental objectives, and instruments. Each of the regimes is still present in the system of EU environmental governance today. Read more ...

By way of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and following the enlargement process of 2004, the EU would like to redefine its own geopolitical interests and relationship to the new neighbours. Furthermore, the new neighbouring countries of the EU should receive an offer to co-operate and build a privileged relationship with the EU. Read more ...