One of the biggest challenges facing policy-makers at present is that of integrating environmental protection goals into economic policy areas. Unless this is genuinely achieved, it is clear that environmental degradation will continue apace. While competition policy is one of the EU's most important areas of economic competence, many policy-makers and commentators reject the notion that environmental concerns should play a significant role in EU competition analysis. Such arguments are rooted in a number of different perspectives.

Some point to the European Commission's adoption of an economic, consumer-welfare-driven approach in its policy documents and decisions in recent years. On this view, while the Commission may in the past have taken environmental considerations into account, such cases now sit uncomfortably with, for example, the Commission's 2004 statement that ‘objective economic benefits’ are necessary for exemption from the Article 101(1) TFEU prohibition of restrictive agreements. This leads some to conclude that, as economic efficiency is now the overriding goal of EU competition policy, competition decision-makers cannot legitimately take into account non-economic factors such as environmental protection. The only exception, by this argument, lies in State aid policy where, by its nature, non-economic concerns such as industrial policy play an important role.