There's only one area British voters trust the EU - on the environment

Ask Britons what they like about the European Union, and right at the top of a minuscule list comes its impact on environmental policy.

By Geoffrey LeanPublished: 8:00AM BST 25 Sep 2009

EU is scrambling to get 15 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020
Polls show they believe Brussels "plays a negative role" in most areas, from policing to education, from economic policy to public transport. They disapprove of its impact on health care, inflation and tackling unemployment by majorities of two to one, on housing by three to one, and on tax by four to one.
But when it comes to the environment, nearly three times as many Britons say that the EU has had a good effect as disagree; only fighting terrorism runs it close. And it is the sole issue where opposition has not grown since the middle of the decade. It is also is one of the very few areas where Britons forget their hostility to Brussels regulations. Nearly twice as many say decisions about the environment should be made jointly with the EU as want them taken by Westminster alone.

And – with immigration and crime-fighting – it is one of the areas they most want the European bureaucracy to focus on. In both cases, support is growing.
They are not wrong. Ever since Britain joined Europe, Brussels has been the driving force in reducing pollution and protecting the environment. A stream of directives – backed up with prosecution when governments have failed to implement them – has cleaned our beaches and drinking water, reduced air pollution, protected wildlife areas and the countryside, and forced developers to assess major projects' environmental impact.
And it's still going on. The Government is facing prosecution in Europe for not observing legal limits on air pollution by particles believed to kill at least 24,000 people in Britain every year, and is likely to be in the dock soon for not controlling nitrogen dioxide, increasingly implicated in the asthma epidemic that afflicts one in seven children. Ministers are about to get into more trouble after the Environment Agency revealed this week that three-quarters of our rivers fail new EU standards.
Even more important, EU policy is beginning to bring about a long overdue revolution in energy policy, to take Britain into the low carbon future essential for combating climate change and generating economic growth. Britain gets the third lowest proportion of its energy from renewables in Europe (after Luxembourg and Malta) despite having the most plentiful resources, and also has the worst insulated houses.
Now, thanks to the decision of a 2007 EU summit, it is scrambling to get 15 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020, and is committed to greatly increasing energy efficiency.
But this time there is a difference. Past EU-initiated clean-ups have been popular, but have not emerged from a particularly democratic process. The directives have usually been initiated by bureaucrats, sometimes heavily influenced by pressure groups: they have, it is true, had to be approved by environment ministers, but these are usually greener than their colleagues. And Britain – long castigated as "the dirty man of Europe" – has often been brought stumbling along in the rear.
The new energy measures, by contrast, were largely a British initiative, sold to fellow political leaders by an alliance of Angela Merkel (providing credibility) and that arch-salesman Tony Blair. They were part of a EU commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 – rising to 30 per cent if other countries follow suit – that has put, and kept, it in the van of the attempt to conclude a new climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.
Gordon Brown has taken similar leadership, this summer proposing a $100 billion a year fund to help poor countries deal with climate change, to try to break deadlock in the international negotiations. Other EU countries, particularly France, were sceptical, but are coming round.
Perhaps our leaders are finally beginning to realise that in this area, almost uniquely, European action is popular.