This report was prepared by Environmental Resources Management (ERM) in the context of the European Commission DG Environment framework contract "Financing Capacity for Implementation and Enforcement of Harmonizing Environmental Policy in the NIS". The first draft of the report was developed in close co-operation with the EAP Task Force Secretariat. The objective of this assignment was to develop a 'road-map' for convergence of environmental legislation across the NIS towards EU directives. The report identifies preliminary priorities that could help to target further technical assistance at the regional or national level. The report therefore identifies the EU directives, or parts of those directives, that could feasibly be targeted for convergence in the next five to ten years, given the environmental priorities and existing implementation capacity in the NIS.

This book brings together the findings of key sector- and media-specific analyses of the environment in the Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia area and puts forth a set of indicators to provide a one-stop, concise and up-to-date assessment accessible also to a non-specialist audience.

Describes progress being made - and barriers to progress - on environmental policies and programmes in the countries of Eastern Europe, Causasus and Central Asia.

The European Union has developed a wide array of external relations with its neighbouring countries. Without offering full membership, the EU nevertheless attempts to transfer its rules and policies to non-member countries. It is this extension of EU rules beyond EU borders that the analysis of external governance seeks to capture. The contributions to this volume explain the modes and effects of EU external governance in a variety of EU–non-member country relations in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Mediterranean region. They cover such diverse issues as trade, environment, security, and democracy promotion and explore the effects of EU institutions, EU power, and the domestic structures of its partner countries on the transfer of EU rules. This book was based on a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.

The tension between the aim of creating sustainable multilateral region-building dynamics and the need to find more differentiated and flexible forms of cooperation has been ever-present in Euro-Mediterranean relations. The proliferation of different and partially overlapping initiatives in recent years – the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean – is a plain expression of this tension. The 2011 episodes of regime-change in the Arab world have once again placed the debate about differentiation in EU’s relations with Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Countries at the top of the Union’s foreign policy agenda. This book contributes to theoretical and practical debates on whether differentiation processes can aid or hinder policy convergence processes and region-building efforts more widely. The contributions to this collection assess the actual significance and consequences of differentiation in Euro-Mediterranean relations through sector-specific in-depth analyses, covering issue areas as varied as environmental policy, migration, foreign and defence policy, trade, energy, civil protection and democracy promotion. The particular angle and comprehensive analysis of this book will make it of great interest for both scholars and policy makers alike in a moment when Euro-Mediterranean are in need of a thorough rethink. This book was based on a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

This book brings together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of European and American scholars to analyze the core theoretical features of the EU's new experimentalist governance architecture and explore its empirical development across a series of key policy domains.

"In July 2007, the European Union initiated a fundamentally new approach to the countries of Central Asia. The launch of the EU Strategy for Central Asia signals a qualitative shift in the Union's relations with a region of the world that is of growing importance as a supplier of energy, is geographically situated in a politically sensitive area - between China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and the south Caucasus - and contains some of the most authoritarian political regimes in the world. In this volume, leading specialists from Europe, the United States and Central Asia explore the key challenges facing the European Union as it seeks to balance its policies between enhancing the Union's energy, business and security interests in the region while strengthening social justice, democratisation efforts and the protection of human rights. With chapters devoted to the Union's bilateral relations with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and to the vital issues of security and democratisation, 'Engaging Central Asia' provides the first comprehensive analysis of the EU's strategic initiative in a part of the world that is fast emerging as one of the key regions of the 21st century."--BOOK JACKET.

As Turkey approaches EU membership it faces the challenge of implementing the requirements of the WFD by the date of its accession to the union, something that will require major structural change and financial investment. Water and Politics in Turkey provides a comprehensive, detailed and authoritative examination of all aspects water management and water resources in Turkey, from evaluation of existing institutions and practices to assessing the difficulties inherent in the enormous changes that must be implemented as Turkey prepares for EU membership. It will be essential reading for water professionals, policy makers, environmentalists, and all those with an interest in Turkey the workings of the European Union.

Standards are everywhere, yet go mostly unnoticed. They define how products, processes, and people interact, assessing these entities’ features and performance and signaling their level of quality and reliability. They can convey important benefits to trade, productivity, and technological progress and play an important role in the health and safety of individual consumers and the environment. Firms’ ability to produce competitive products depends on the availability of adequate quality-support services. A “national quality infrastructure” denotes the chain of public and private services (standardization, metrology, inspection, testing, certification, and accreditation) needed to ascertain that products and services introduced in the marketplace meet defined requirements, whether demanded by authorities or by consumers. In much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, national quality infrastructure systems are underdeveloped and not harmonized with those of their trading partners. This imbalance increases trade costs, hinders local firms’ competitiveness, and weakens overall export performance. The objective of Harnessing Quality for Global Competitiveness in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is to highlight the need to reform and modernize the institutions in the region toward better quality and standards. The book ties in with much of the work done in the World Bank on the business environment, trade facilitation, economic diversification, and enterprise innovation. The countries in the region can improve this situation, revising mandatory standards, streamlining technical regulations, and harmonizing their national quality infrastructure with those of regional and international trade partners. Most governments will need to invest strategically in their national quality infrastructure, including pooling services with neighboring countries and stimulating local awareness and demand for quality. Specifically for the countries of the former Soviet Union, the restructuring process will need to improve governance, thus eliminating conflicts of interest and providing technically credible services to the economy.

EU external democracy promotion has traditionally been based on ‘linkage’, i.e. bottom-up support for democratic forces in third countries, and ‘leverage’, i.e. the top-down inducement of political elites towards democratic reforms through political conditionality. The advent of the European Neighbourhood Policy and new forms of association have introduced a new, third model of democracy promotion which rests in functional cooperation between administrations. This volume comparatively defines and assesses these three models of external democracy promotion in the EU’s relations with its eastern and southern neighbours. It argues that while ‘linkage’ has hitherto failed to produce tangible outcomes, and the success of ‘leverage’ has basically been tied to an EU membership perspective, the ‘governance’ model of democracy promotion bears greater potential beyond the circle of candidate countries. This third approach, while not tackling the core institutions of the political system as such, but rather promoting transparency, accountability, and participation at the level of state administration, may turn out to remain the EU’s most tangible form of democratic governance promotion in the future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Democratization.