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Symbolic of the concern for prevention that now accompanies human development, environmental assessment (EA) has, since the end of the 1970s, been a complex, widespread, and continuously reinforced approach to policymaking. At the confluence of procedure and substantive protection, it aims, on the one hand, to anticipate the harm generated by human activities in order to avoid, reduce, and offset it. It takes multiple forms, the outcomes of which—in terms of oversight of public policies and concrete effects on the authorities—appear mixed (I.). On the other hand, environmental assessment can also be understood as an a posteriori approach, designed to study the real effects of public policies in order to modify them if necessary. This second dimension of assessment, however, remains largely underdeveloped and arguably falls short of meeting contemporary challenges (II.).