Little effort can be observed in changing the basic de facto role of the economic instruments. They still play overwhelmingly revenue-raising purposes and capitalize environmental funds. In some cases, alternative economic instruments, which could address a given environmental problem more effectively and efficiently, are ignored and environmental charges are favored due to their revenue raising potential. Instruments such as deposit refund systems, bubble policy, tradable permits still have unused potential in the region.
EU accession is becoming the overriding framework for designing environmental policy in most of the CEECs. Since EU environmental legislation is dominated by command and control approach, most of negotiations center around transposing technological and emission limits. Meanwhile, inside the EU, there is an increasing recognition that the costs of compliance is becoming prohibitive and in some member states non-compliance is present. Several new environmental policy initiatives are under discussion which aim at introducing more cost-effective approaches into the Community policy. Many of these call for more extended application of economic instruments. It would be very important to incorporate these new waves of environmental policy into the accession negotiations.
No doubt even with more flexible instruments, the financial burden of EU harmonization is so high that the rational environmental policy approach must be well designed and implemented in phases. Economic instruments, for e.g. bubble policy, incentive charges, and performance bond, can efficiently support such policy goals.
The perspective which considers economic instruments only as means to raise money for additional financing of EU accession should be avoided. However, well-designed and functioning environmental funds can efficiently enhance the impact of charges. A set of clear requirements could be established in the negotiations on the basis of Community guidelines on State aid for environmental protection. Those requirements could replace ad hoc approaches toward the function of environmental funds in the pre accession process.
Political wills, negotiations, clear definition of the targeted environmental problem and proper preparation are important for the introduction of the economic instruments. Successful implementation usually requires simple charge schema and administration structure, at least at the beginning.
There are only few examples in the legislation on any economic instruments that require regular and systematic monitoring and evaluation of the instrument performance. Planning for ex post evaluation can bring forward important issues even in the preparatory phase of designing an instrument. Furthermore, such evaluation can highlight important lessons for further development of the policy measures.