Visies van partijen die betrokken zijn in de discussie omtrent handel en milieu: GATT, private sector, ontwikkelingslanden, regering en niet-governementele organisaties.

This paper analyses the environmental dimensions the past accession of Greece, Portugal and Spain to the EU in order to draw lessons for the current accession of countries of Central and Eastern Europe. A distinction is made between scale, composition and technique effects. Two major conclusions are drawn. First, the impacts of accession differed significantly among accession countries, due to economic, social, political and geographical factors. Second, the composition effect was relatively unimportant and the technique effect was positive due to the modernisation of production and the implementation of the environmental acquis. A negative scale effect dominated in the areas of consumption and transport. Accession also led to growing disparities at the regional level. At the time of accession, Greece, Portugal and Spain showed similarities with present-day Eastern European countries. Lessons from the southern enlargement are drawn for the current accession, in particular for Poland.

We examine the causal effects of the energy subsidy programme PetroCaribe in the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. We use the synthetic control method to construct a counterfactual and compare it to the outcomes of the beneficiary countries and thus estimate the magnitude and direction of the PetroCaribe effect. PetroCaribe had a positive effect on economic growth in most of the beneficiary countries; however, this economic boost was not followed by an improvement in social development. Environmentally, PetroCaribe did not negatively or positively impact the environmental quality of the member countries, in the sense that we do not find a significant effect on the trend of emissions per capita.