Inadequate legislation against environmental pollution

In order to increase national and regional competitiveness, and to save endangered jobs, there is increasing pressure for the cancellation of regulations concerning environmental protection. In the UK in 1993, the government engaged in a review of some 7,000 regulations constraining business and industry. Some of the environmental regulations were introduced as recently as 1990. This was perceived as an effective dismantling of environmental controls allowing irresponsible entrepreneurs to cut corners at the expense of environmental protection and responsible businesses.

Alternatively, a government may draft inadequate laws. A law presupposes a method of verifying its application. In 1996, planned Belgian ecological tax exemptions for recycled paper products could not be introduced because it was impossible to distinguish recycled paper products from new paper products.

Another legal inadequacy is defining the objects to which the law is meant to apply in terms of some inconsequential property, rather than in terms of the property that must be legally controlled. In 1996, in France, razor manufacturers circumvented ecological taxes on disposable razors by producing 2-piece disposable razors. The law stipulated that 1-piece razors would be taxed.