Policy dismantling at EU level: Reaching the limits of ‘an ever‐closer ecological union’?

Abstract

Having explained their adoption, analysts are now trying to understand how EU environmental policies have subsequently evolved over time. In 2003, David Vogel famously speculated that having overtaken the US in the environmental race to the top, EU policies would also eventually succumb to policy gridlock, that is, neither expanding nor dismantling. Empirical research has since confirmed that EU policy expansion is in decline, but less is known about why dismantling has also been very limited. This article breaks new ground by reconfiguring dismantling—a concept developed for national policy systems—to explain the various dismantling strategies deployed at EU level (1992 to 2016). It finds that the absence of significant dismantling is due both to the symbolic nature of early dismantling attempts and the failure of more recent attempts to build coalitions that overcome institutional obstacles to policy change in the EU.

The Covid-19 crisis: a critical juncture for EU climate policy development?

“…Our analysis shows that the EGD may yet prove to be more transformational and may itself represent a critical juncture leading to far-reaching change in EU climate policy, that the Covid-19 crisis then reinforced and advanced. While the status of the Covid-19 crisis or the EGD as critical junctures for EU climate policy will not least depend on implementation, these results contrast starkly with previous research on EU responses to crises, and particularly the 2008/2009 economic crisis, that shows that environmental and climate policies were rather side-lined, leading to stagnation and delays in policy development and implementation (Gravey and Jordan 2019;Lenschow, Burns, and Zito 2020).…”

“…This was manifested in Commission statements on the connections between environmental degradation and health, which provide for a knowledge-based justification of environmental and climate action at the centre of the response to the pandemic (European Commission 2020a). This contrasts starkly with the response to the 2008/2009 crisis, when conditions tended to undermine climate action (Gravey and Jordan 2019).…”

“…Just as the Commission and other EU institutions were preparing for the implementation of the EGD, the Covid-19 crisis hit. Experience from previous economic crises, and the economic and financial crisis of 2008/2009 especially, suggests that climate and environmental policy may be set aside or downgraded in importance (Gravey and Jordan 2019). However, advanced knowledge about the importance of the sustainability transition and the increased political weight of climate change mean that the Covid-19 crisis may instead trigger a response that reinforces EU climate ambitions and drives EU climate policy towards transformational change.…”

Presidential leadership styles and institutional capacity for climate policy integration in the European Commission

“…Juncker also pursued a 'Better Regulation' agenda that aimed at identifying unnecessary or redundant EU policies. This agenda threatened certain established environmental policies, which revealed a lack of commitment or clear understanding of functional overlaps in practice, and which also partly explains the slow development of climate policy proposals in Juncker's early years (Burns & Tobin, 2020;Gravey & Jordan, 2019).…”

EU climate and energy governance in times of crisis: towards a new agenda

“…Indeed, Nicolaïdis (2019) has proposed that addressing long-term challenges, such as mitigating climate change, could be a central plank of a new 'constitutional settlement' for the EU. Others, however, have claimed that the post-2008 financial and economic crisis constrained the development of both EU climate and environmental policy, at times leading to policy stagnation and even outright dismantling (Burns et al, 2020;Gravey & Jordan, 2020;Slominski, 2016). Furthermore, it has been argued that the rise of right-wing populism has complicated efforts to advance ambitious EU climate policies and rendered public support more fragile (Counterpoint, 2021;Fraune & Knodt, 2018;Lockwood, 2018;Schaller & Carius, 2019).…”