The principle of environmental integration is a popular topic in European Union (EU) environmental law research. In their new book, Gracia Marín Durán and Elisa Morgera approach this familiar theme from a novel perspective – that of EU external relations with an emphasis on bilateral and inter-regional dimensions. This focus makes the book of particular interest from the perspective of Transnational Environmental Law: the rich variety of examples in the book illustrate how transnational environmental cooperation increasingly takes place beyond multilateral environmental processes. Looking into environmental integration in the EU’s external trade policy and cooperation policies, the book sheds light on relatively unexplored legal, quasi-legal and institutional forms of cooperation, from trade agreements and their sustainability impact assessments to external assistance, EU support for the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in developing countries, and institutionalized dialogues with third countries.

The book proceeds from the insight that the EU attempts to advance environmental protection objectives not only through its participation in multilateral environmental cooperation but also through its bilateral and regional relations. According to the authors, the latter aspect ‘is becoming an increasingly important factor in the shaping of global environmental governance, running in parallel to multilateral processes’ (at p. 1). To demonstrate this point, the book analyzes the environmental dimensions of a wide array of instruments that the EU has either adopted unilaterally or negotiated with its bilateral or regional partners. The book consists of seven chapters covering the role of the environmental integration requirement (Chapter 1) in bilateral and inter-regional agreements (Chapter 2); the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) (Chapter 3); the EU’s external assistance (Chapter 4), institutionalized dialogues (Chapter 5), Sustainability Impact Assessments (Chapter 6); and support for environmental multilateralism (Chapter 7). The book contains case studies of several individual countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

The amount of material that the authors have studied is truly impressive. Chapter 2, for example, explores in detail a range of association and other bilateral and inter-regional agreements between the EU and third countries, comparing and analyzing provisions that integrate environmental protection requirements into these agreements. One of its key conclusions is that the practice in such agreements is not uniform but there are differences with respect to, inter alia, the degree of attention paid to the environment, the legal strength of environmental requirements, the applicable standards and the relevant institutional mechanisms (at p. 134). Chapter 3 focuses on the EU GSP scheme, a unilateral measure based on World Trade Organization (WTO) law through which the EU grants preferential market access to qualifying developing countries. As the book explains, the EU revised its GSP scheme between 1995 and 2001, introducing ‘special-incentives mechanisms’ and conditionalities related to environmental protection (at p. 147). The discussion contains several interesting details, including the fact that the EU is the only GSP donor to use incentives that reward compliance with environmental requirements rather than penalize non-compliance as in the case of other donors (at p. 169). Looking at a host of thematic and geographic financing instruments that underlie the EU’s external assistance, Chapter 4 introduces another set of unilateral tools that the EU uses to promote the environmental integration requirement in its external relations. While the authors highlight that the EU is the world’s largest provider of development assistance, and that its environment-committed funding has considerably increased in absolute terms , their conclusion is that the overall amount of financial resources allocated to environmental protection ‘remains modest’ and represents only some 4.3 per cent of all EU external assistance (at pp. 203–4).

The book’s greatest strength lies in the amount of detail it provides. The concrete examples serve to illustrate the authors’ main argument – that bilateral and inter-regional tools play an important role in environmental cooperation among states, and the authors also succeed in shedding light on the nature and function of such tools. But what does all this mean for the overall landscape of environmental law and governance? It would have been interesting for the authors to attempt also to draw some further reaching conclusions from the issues discussed. For example, how is the EU’s application of the environmental integration principle in its external relations perceived by third states? To be sure, the book touches upon the legitimacy of the EU’s efforts to integrate the environmental protection requirement into its bilateral and regional relations, included in Chapters 3 and 4. However, a more thorough discussion of the relevant legal and political implications would have been useful, especially having regard to the ongoing debate on the compatibility of the EU’s climate change unilateralism with international law, general resistance towards conditionalities in aid recipient countries, and the authors’ own intriguing conclusion that the EU’s approach to integrating the environmental protection requirement into its external relations has been motivated by ‘the desire to see environmental multilateralism … shaped by the Union’s own environmental interests and approaches’ (at p. 287). Against this background, it would have been worthwhile to include a chapter dedicated to assessing what the trend identified and analyzed in the book means for environmental law and governance in a more general sense.

Overall, this well-researched book broadens the traditional focus from the EU’s internal legislation and MEAs towards other increasingly relevant forms of transnational environmental governance. As such, it provides a solid basis for a discussion of the broader implications of this trend, including its multifaceted legitimacy implications.