作者:金杜律师事务所 Kiing & Wood Mallesons

Environmental policy has hardly been mentioned in the public debate on EU Membership so far, which is quite surprising as about 90 per cent of the UK’s environmental legislation comes from EU legislation. The EU has had a huge impact on the development of environmental policy and law in the UK over the past 40 years and has undoubtedly had a positive effect in making us clean up our act in areas like air pollution, water pollution and waste management, although some EU environmental laws have been criticised as burdensome red tape by some business sectors.

目前,围绕退欧展开的公开辩论几乎从来没有提到环境政策,这是令人感到非常意外的,因为近90%的英国环境法规都源自欧盟法规。在过去40年中,欧盟对英国环境政策和法律的发展产生了巨大影响。尽管一些企业部门批评部分欧盟环境法律,认为这些繁琐的规定造成了很大负担,但毫无疑问,在治理空气污染、水污染和废物管理方面,欧盟对我们的工作起到了积极的推动作用。

It is very difficult to predict what environmental law and policy in the UK might look like following any EU exit, but here are two possibilities. Firstly, within the UK itself, environmental policy is devolved to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and we are already starting to see policies diverging between the different parts of the UK, with Scotland and Wales generally setting more ambitious environmental goals than England and Northern Ireland. Currently, that happens within the framework provided by EU environmental law, but without that framework, it is possible that policies in different parts of the UK could diverge even further which could make compliance more difficult for businesses operating in more than one part of the UK.

退欧后,英国的环境法律和环境政策将会怎样,这很难预测,这里只提出两种可能发生的情况。首先,从英国内部来看,苏格兰、威尔士及北爱尔兰政府均自行制定环境政策。我们发现,目前英国各地区的环境政策已经出现了差异,苏格兰和威尔士的环境治理目标比英格兰和北爱尔兰的目标更宏大。这还是目前留在欧盟环境法框架内的情况,一旦脱离这个框架,不同地区政策之间的差别可能更大,对在英国不同地区经营的企业来说,合规工作就更加困难。

A second possibility however is that leaving the EU would actually have little impact on environmental law and policy in the UK and there are two reasons for that. The first reason is that if UK businesses wanted to trade with the EU, any goods exported to the EU would still have to comply with EU environmental standards. And if the UK joined the EEA or EFTA, we would still have to sign up to most of the EU’s environmental laws, because those laws also affect the functioning of the single market.

第二种情况是,退出欧盟实际上对英国环境法律和政策的影响很小,造成这种情况的原因有两个。第一个原因是,如果英国企业要与欧盟进行交易,任何货物要想出口至欧盟,必须遵守欧盟环境标准。如果英国加入欧洲经济区或欧洲自由贸易联盟,我们还是得签署绝大多数的欧盟环境法,因为这些法规同样影响到统一市场的运行。

The second reason is that a lot of EU environmental legislation implements international treaty commitments which the UK has signed up to in its own right on matters ranging from climate change to cross border movements of waste. So even if we weren’t in the EU, we would still have to honour those international commitments.

第二个原因是,多数欧盟环境法规是为实施国际条约而制定的,而英国也自行签署了如气候变化、废弃物跨境转移等国际条约。因此,即便我们继续留在欧盟,我们仍然需要履行这些义务。