Jenny Fairbrass and Andrew Jordan examine the relevance of multi‐level governance for understanding environmental policy. In doing so, their case studies of biodiversity and land use planning policy in the UK are seen as ‘critical tests’ for multi‐level governance. This is partly because the UK is seen as an ‘extreme case’ of a unitary state and the UK government has traditionally approached European negotiations with great scepticism. Moreover, because environmental policy is regulatory, the costs are likely to fall most heavily on national actors rather than on the EU. Drawing on a comparison with EU structural policy, they find that there are parallels in the governance of the two policy domains in that they both exhibit intricate, disputed, and unpredictable decision‐making.