This book offers a window into the mechanisms that drive events when countries with poor track records in environmental protection and low administrative capacity, join an organisation with ambitious environmental regulatory regimes, which include some of the highest environmental protections standards in the world.

This book examines the institutional building capacity in Romania after two decades of the development of the EU's environmental policy on elaboration, transposition, implementation, monitoring and institutional building. The book examines how Romania has fared as one of the least environmentally friendly EU member states, and poses the following questions. What are the limits of Europeanisation in the area of public policies? What is the reason why, despite the overwhelming public interest in environmental issues, and widespread agreement that urgent action to protect the environment and prevent catastrophic climate change are paramount, the pace of achieving the goals is remains slow. Why do policies fail?

This book brings together several case studies focusing on the evolution of environmental policies in Romania over the last twenty years, with a special focus on the post-accession period (2007 onwards). The book provides an analysis of policies, where progress is less than satisfactory, and examines why this is the case.

Todor Arpad is a university lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science within the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (NUPSPA) where he is the coordinator of the Master in Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development. He also works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a public policy coordinator within the POCA project,Consolidating and promoting Romania's position as a relevant actor in decision-making processes at the European level. He obtained a P.h.D in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute and a P.h.D in Political Science at NUPSPA  a master's degree in political communication and electoral marketing within the SNSPA, and a master's degree in political science within the CEU. He was the country coordinator in theWilling to pay?project coordinated by Sven Steinmo at the European University Institute. He was co-coordinator of the Romania team within the EUandi project (Voting Advice Application) at the European Parliamentary elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019. The project, coordinated by the European University Institute (funded by the European Commission), involves analyzing the political programs on several dimensions of electoral competition for electoral competitors. In 2013-2015 he was the Executive Coordinator of the Constitutional Forum.

Helepciuc Floren?a-Elena earned a BSc and a MSc degree in plant biotechnologies from the University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest and a Ph.D. in biology from the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy. Starting from 2006 Helepciuc Floren?a-Elena has been working as a researcher at the Institute of Biology of the Romanian Academy in projects concerning phytopathogens biocontrol, endangered, and rare species conservation, plant and microbial secondary metabolites, and published several articles in these fields. Recently she has been involved in projects concerning public policies for sustainable development and biodiversity.