Studies of EPI in the EU have emphasized that network building per se is incompatible with the rather unidirectional normative underpinning of something like EPI. Thus, following an initial period of intense network development and implementation in the late 1990s, the pursuit of EPI increasingly exposed environmental policy makers to demands for ‘reverse integration’ (that is, environmental policy taking on board the demands of the social and economic sectors), thus hinting that political power games were underestimated by those who initiated the network building. Hence, network building is not an administratively light or politically uncomplicated means of coordination.