Many faces of dismantling: hiding policy change in non-legislative acts in EU environmental policy

Crisis, Climate Change and Comitology: Policy Dismantling Via the Backdoor?

“…They found that the EU exhibited a long‐term trend of policy expansion until 2010, followed by four years of limited policy activity (also see Kassim et al ., ). Pollex and Lenschow () analysed two policies – on eco‐design and eco‐labelling – and found evidence of settings being weakened via technical implementing measures.…”

“…Firstly, we analyse climate and energy policy adopted between 1998 and 2015, but in a departure from Slominski's approach, we analyse policy intensity and density to test his claim that there has been no substantive shift in this policy area's ambition. Moreover, we use a different method for capturing intensity from that used by others (Gravey and Jordan, ; Pollex and Lenschow, ; Steinebach and Knill, ), by focusing specifically on environmental ambition and including consideration of scope and settings within a wider environmental paradigm. Finally, we analyse whether there is a difference in density and intensity across OLP and DIA legislation.…”

“…The above discussion of the DIA system illustrates that there have been ongoing concerns that these measures are insufficiently transparent and fail to permit robust monitoring (Christiansen and Dobbels, ; Kaeding and Hardacre, ). Moreover, as noted above, there is a suggestion that attempts to dismantle environmental policy have taken place via these mechanisms (Pollex and Lenschow, ). It seems likely that if the crisis era has resulted in cooling EU climate policy ambition, then DIA measures provide a route via which policy can be dismantled or weakened behind closed doors.…”

“…Turning to DIA processes, given that these measures are used for technical updates to legislation, we assumed that they should not increase or decrease existing levels of ambition significantly (for limitations on the Commission's powers to ‘supplement’ a legislative act, see European Court of Justice, ). However, the EP's insistence on being given the right to scrutinize DIA measures, and Pollex and Lenschow's () findings that implementing measures have been used to dismantle policy, suggest that DIA measures may be used to alter policies beyond what is envisaged in the treaties. To test the uncertain status of these technical instruments we are guided by the technical rationale underpinning these measures and hypothesize that…”

“…Indeed, if the Commission were to suspect that proposed legislation via the OLP may not be agreed due to heightened sensitivity to economic concerns (Slominski, ), or alternatively, wished to dismantle policy but feared the veto power of the co‐legislators (the Council and the EP), one way in which to achieve its policy objectives would be via the back‐door route of DIA. For example, Pollex and Lenschow () found through a fine‐grained analysis of two environmental policies that these implementing measures have been used to adjust settings in ways that represent policy weakening. By supplementing that study with a wider analysis of policy we complement other work on the use of implementing measures in the EU (Christiansen and Dobbels, ; Kaeding and Hardacre, ), the burgeoning literature on policy dismantling (Bauer and Knill, ; Jordan et al ., ; Pollex and Lenschow, ) and that on EU climate policy (Bäckstrand and Elgström, ; Kilian and Elgström, ; Parker and Karlsson, ).…”