Do Environmental Rules and Standards Affect Firms’ Competitive Ability?

The article considers whether EU environmental standards are relevant for the competitiveness of our firms and analyses this phenomenon under the lenses of EU law and case-law as developed through the decades. Starting from the first environmental rules adopted by the EEC prior to the conferral of competences in this field by the Member States to the Community in order to remove ‘non-tariff barriers’ to trade within the (old) common market, the analysis moves to the implications for EU firms of EU environmental standards as they have been established within the EU environmental policy and consistently with the goal of a high level of environmental protection within the EU. The analysis seems to show that within the EU a race to the bottom never occurred ; on the contrary, the EU comprehensive legislation on environmental purposes based on the duty to comply with high environmental standards has improved EU firms’ competitiveness in the global markets. Given these results, the author welcomes recent EU initiatives aimed at adopting unilateral “extraterritorial” environmental standards applicable to non-EU firms engaged in trade with the EU, or to negotiate high environmental standards within trade agreements executed between the EU and third countries