Environmental decisions and electronic democracy

This paper gives a brief overview on new tendencies in environmental policy regarding electronic democracy, with two examples of environmental directives. The European Commission proposed Internet technology for the first time for the dissemination of the Solvent Directive (1999/13/EC), in order to display available information for the numerous affected sectors. Moreover, the possibility of an information exchange between the Commission, the Member States and approximately 400 000 companies concerned by the Directive was created. Another major topic of European Environmental Policy is the IPPC-Directive (96/61/EC), which requires an information exchange on and determination of the best available techniques for most industrial sectors in Europe. The decision making process is described in this paper, with special emphasis on the possibilities of electronic democracy. Based on these considerations, aspects of decision-making behaviour, in the context of integrated decision support for complex issues in the environmental domain, are analysed and put forth for discussion.