The genesis of EC environmental principles. Research Paper in Law 7/2003

[From the Introduction]. The EC Treaty in its present version contains a number of environmental principles. The following contribution will try to retrace the origins of these principles in the EC Treaty and how they were developed by the EC institutions and in particular by the Commission. This discussion concerns the principles of integration[1], prevention[2] and precaution[3], the principle that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source[4] and the polluter-pays principle[ 5].