Abstract When scrutinising the literature on EU environmental policy, it becomes apparent that there has been a comprehensive transition in underlying governance ideas during the last two decades. At the core of these changes is the abolition of traditional patterns of interventionist command-and-control regulation in favour of economic instruments and context-oriented governance. In view of these developments, this article has two objectives: first, it looks into which causes and factors initiated these discussions; second, it analyses the effects these reform ideas had on actual patterns of governance. As will be shown, changes in governance ideas are only partially expressed in changes in policy instruments.