Christopher Booker and Richard North (eureferendum.com) have been chasing the link between flooding in Somerset and EU’s Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC and Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC. So far they seem to have missed the earlier Birds Directive.
The Birds Directive was proposed in 1976 and adopted in 1979.
The EU did not exist at this time, it was created by Treaty of Maastricht which was signed in 1992 and came into force, creating EU, in 1993.
This leads me to believe people looking in 1990s and 2000s for signs of environmental involvement which lead to recent UK flooding, are really looking in the wrong place.
Some mark the start of ECC/EU environmental action as the 1972 Paris summit.
John Gummer was parliamentary private secretary to the Minister of Agriculture at the time. This is the same John Gummer who create the Environment Agency and now, as Lord Deben, is chairman of DECC (the department of energy and climate change). DECC is actively involved in guiding current UK/EU policy towards flooding, see Flooding is EU and UK government Policy Feb 2014/
The book Informal Governance In The European Union, around pages 100-106, describes how pressure groups such as RSPB, FOE, Greenpeace and WWF lobby to influence EU policy.
RPSB clearly regard the Birds Directive as a crucial step leading to the other environmental directives as these documents by Andrew Dodd (head of site conservation RSPB) and THE LAW OF THE WILD:Meeting the challenge for birds and people
(foreward by Alistair Gammell Director, RSPB International Operations)
