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Italy and the EU's environment and consumer policies: coalition-building, problem framing and informal channels of influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2016

Daniela Sicurelli
Daniela Sicurelli*
Affiliation:
Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerche sul Cambiamento Politico (CIRCAP), Università di Siena, via Mattioli 10, 53100 Siena. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Although it is considered among the ‘environmental laggard’ states of the Union, Italy proved able to perform a crucial role in the promotion of one of the basic principles of EU environmental and consumer policy, namely the precautionary principle. The Italian government was influential in promoting this principle in EU food safety policy, in particular in a 2000 Directive on genetically modified organisms. This picture is certainly not one-sided, as the weakness of the Italian government in influencing EU decision-makers in the case of the 2001 Cocoa Directive shows. The main factors that explain when Italy matters in the EU environmental and consumer policy process are the way interests are aggregated, the way the problem is framed and the types of channels exploited to affect the policy process.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 9 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Italy in the EU: pigmy or giant? The role of Italian actors in EU policy-making , November 2004 , pp. 203 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

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