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Nuclear power plants require cooling water. When numerous nuclear plants were built in the 1970s, they were thus placed at major rivers. This caused cross-border problems, since in Europe, many rivers crossed or constituted borders. As awareness for thermal and radioactive pollution grew, border areas became hotbeds of European anti-nuclear protest. Advocates of European integration suggested that the European Communities (EC) were best positioned to resolve this issue. This article analyses the EC rulemaking attempts regarding the siting of nuclear power plants and explains why they failed. It argues that while the cross-border nature of the problem of nuclear installations at borders justified EC-level legal solutions, the geography of nuclear plants militated against supranational solutions - at a time of national vetoes and when energy security was considered a national sovereignty concern. The article is based on the analysis of primary sources from European Union and national archives. By taking the physical and political geography of nuclear energy into account, this article offers new perspectives on the role of borders and border studies, on the history of nuclear energy and society, and on the history of European integration.

The European Parliament (EP) has long been derided as a powerless talking shop, notably before the 1979 elections and the granting of new co-legislative powers with the Single European Act. This article argues instead that already in the 1970s and early 1980s, the EP was a decisive player not only in initiating, but also in defining - and refining - European policy. Drawing on the case of the nascent environmental policy, the analysis demonstrates how the EP, its committees and members (MEPs), skilfully utilised the limited range of instruments available to them. In the early 1970s, the EP pushed for the inclusion of environmental policy into the EC policy portfolio and tried to influence its contents. In the early 1980s, after a decade of environmental legislation, the EP was an important advocate of making the already existing environmental law work and of adding new European laws. Their arguments and practices illustrate that MEPs were clearly aware of the limits but also of the opportunities the EC institutional system provided. Before as well as after direct elections, the EP exploited environmental scandals in the European public sphere - Rhine pollution, Seveso - to push for a greener, more environmentally friendly Europe. In a federalist spirit, the EP pursued institutional objectives at the same time: the strengthening of EC-level policy making and legal instruments, along with its own self-strengthening.

"While the site occupation at Wyhl in 1975 is usually considered the symbolic birthplace of the West German anti-nuclear movement, it may also serve as the starting point for a transnational history of anti-nuclear protest. Local cross-border cooperation among protesters at Wyhl deeply impressed those anti-nuclear activists in the mid-1970s who considered nuclear power a global problem and encouraged them to take their protest to the international level. The central argument of this article is that protest directed against international organizations (IOs) - notably the European Communities (EC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provided a crucial catalyst for transnational cooperation among anti-nuclear activists. Targeting IOs as the key promoters of nuclear power on a global scale, anti-nuclear activists cooperated across borders organizing protest events. Their goal was to challenge the IOs and win back the public on the issue across borders. Based on multi-archival research, this article analyzes five transnational protest events between 1975 and 1978 in Western Europe. Findings suggest that continued cooperation led to the emergence of a transnational anti-nuclear network and facilitated transnational transfers of scientific expertise and protest practices." (author's abstract)

This article analyses the emergence of an environmental policy of the European Communities (EC) in the 1970s in terms of the Europeanisation of the environment. Drawing on the conceptual literature on Europeanisation, three different types of Europeanisation are distinguished: first, Europeanisation as establishment of institutions and policy making at the EC-level, secondly, Europeanisation as the EC's impact on the member state, and thirdly, societal Europeanisation, as a process of establishing transnational cooperation of societal actors across the EC. The article disentangles the process of Europeanisation of the environment emphasising the beginnings of Europeanisation in the context of the Council of Europe and the take-over by the EC of policy ideas and principles from the international level. Furthermore, it addresses the rapid emergence of societal Europeanisation, notably by anticipating the European impact on member state legislation. Elaboré à l'échelle internationale, le concept politique d'environnement offre l'exemple rare du transfert d'un domaine d'action politique vers les Communautés européennes depuis d'autres internnationales. Cet article explore le processus complexe d' de la politique environnementale, comme un transfert à directions multiples d'un concept forgé dans les années 1970.

1\. Introduction 5 2\. Conceptual Clarifications 7 2.1 Mechanisms of Diffusion 7 2.2 How to Analyze Environmental Ideas? 8 3\. Where Did Ideas about the Environment Come from? 9 4\. Which Ideas Were Adopted? The Environmental Action Programme of 1973 12 5\. Which International Models Did the EC Draw on? 15 5.1 UNESCO - Man and the Biosphere 1968 16 5.2 US - National Environmental Policy Act 1969 18 5.3 Council of Europe - European Conservation Year 1970 19 5.4 The UN Conference on the Human Environment 1972 20 5.5 Summary: Which Ideas were Included? 21 6\. How and Why Did the EC Receive and Appropriate Environmental Ideas? 23 7\. Conclusions 26 Literature 29 ; Environmental policy has become an important area of European Union (EU) policy making, even though it had not originally been foreseen in the Treaty of Rome. Its emergence in the early 1970s can be understood as a result of a transfer of the novel policy idea of the environment to the European level. This paper thus inquires into the emergence of a European environmental policy from a diffusion of ideas perspective. Rather than focusing on multi-level policy making it seeks to trace the diffusion of environmental ideas from the level of international organizations to the European Communities (EC) in the early 1970s. It analyzes how and why these new concepts were taken up by the European Communities and adapted to the specific institutional framework of the EC. Starting with a brief introduction into the historical context, the paper first explores the origins of the notion of the environment as a political concept emerging in the context of international organizations at the time. Secondly, an analysis of the first Environmental Action Programme of 1973 will be used to show how the EC conceptualized the environment, including the definition of problems and potential remedies. Thirdly, the origins of these ideas will be traced back to international models, from the UNESCO conference "Man and the Biosphere" in 1968 onwards. In a final step, the paper tries ...

"Dieser Aufsatz untersucht den Beitrag der Umweltorganisationen in der Frühphase der Umweltpolitik der Europäischen Gemeinschaft. In den frühen 1970er Jahren entsteht in den Mitgliedsstaaten parallel zur Erfindung von Umwelt als Politikfeld eine moderne Umweltbewegung. Erstaunlich rasch geht diese den Weg nach Europa. Als transnationale Grass-Roots-lnitiative, aber mit Unterstützung der Europäischen Kommission wird bereits 1974 das Europäische Umweltbüro (EEB) als europäischer Dachverband etabliert, der aber lange Zeit personell unterbesetzt bleibt. Dagegen zeigt das Beispiel der Entstehung der Vogelschutzrichtlinie von 1979, dass nicht-staatliche Akteure bereits in den 1970er Jahren in der Lage waren, in transnationaler Zusammenarbeit untereinander und mit europäischen Institutionen Umweltthemen auf die europäische Agenda zu setzen, mit öffentlichem Druck und Expertise Einfluss zu nehmen, und so auf die Mitgliedsstaaten hin zu wirken, Europas Zugvögel unter europäischen Schutz zu stellen." (Autorenreferat)