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Environmental assessment has long been held to be a key tool in achieving one of the cornerstones of European Community environmental policy, that of environmental integration. However, it has taken the best part of 30 years to get to the point of implementation of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive, due in 2004. Securing legislation for environmental assessment at strategic decision levels as well as project level EIA has been a symbolic milestone for environmentalists. This paper explores the background to the SEA Directive and analyses in detail its key requirements and implications for implementation. The paper also examines the relationship between the SEA Directive and the changing policy context over the period of its long gestation. It concludes that the SEA Directive has arrived at an opportune time to reinvigorate the environmental integration agenda, currently beleaguered by the much stronger social and economic agenda dominant in current EU conceptions of sustainable development. While there has been positive formalisation and strengthening of EU environmental policy over the past 30 years, arguably there has been inadequate real change in terms of the effective integration of the environment into decision-making on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]