Abstract.Environmental protection is inherently a cross‐border issue, which might be thought to create opportunities for transnational regulation. This has significant potential consequences for European integration. However, two contrasting trends can be identified. On the one hand, the increasing magnitude of environmental problems, along with growing public and elite awareness of these issues, are generating responses which put the European Community at the centre of a process of ‘regulation’. It is intended that this role should grow in the twin contexts of the Single Market and of increasing interaction with Eastern Europe with its vast pollution problems. On the other hand, however, the kind of ‘political’ policy intervention which environmental protection requires has not really developed. EC environmental policies have thus far been rather weak in both formulation and, especially, implementation, and even existing gains are likely to come under increasing pressure from the trend towards economic deregulation characteristic of the Single European Market project. Probably the most significant impact of Community efforts in the environmental field has been to encourage the convergence and strengthening of national regulation among member states, more than to create distinct European policy processes and ins