The Europeanization of Polish climate policy

Abstract

The goal of the work was to analyse the positions of the selected Polish political parties about the European Union climate policy and to assess whether and to what extent the process of Europeanization is taking place in Poland. Climate change negatively influences economic growth: it affects food security and limits industrial output and economic development. It reduces labour productivity and influences international trade. The scope of this impact will depend on political decisions and the effectiveness of climate protection measures taken by individual governments. The negative attitude of political parties to climate policy may make it challenging to undertake the necessary adaptation and mitigation measures, even despite changes in social perception in this regard.

Polish climate policy in the opinion of young Poles - a pilot survey

“…The main directions of research include the role and involvement of different actors and stakeholders in climate change policies (e.g. Arijit et al, 2017;Peregrino de Brito, 2022;Mulema et al, 2022;Swacha et al, 2022;Jastrzębska, 2019;van Ginkel et al, 2020;Baba et al, 2021), as well as climate change and climate change risk perception and its determinants (e.g. Van der Linden, 2015;Shao et al, 2014;Steynor & Pasquini, 2019;Lee et al, 2015;Cheval et al, 2022;European Union, 2021;Ruiz et al, 2020;Funatsu et al, 2019;van Valkengoed et al, 2021van Valkengoed et al, , 2022Godawska, 2020;Marlon et al, 2022;Weber, 2016).…”

“…Poland, as a member state of the European Union and a party to the Paris Agreement, is obliged to implement a policy aimed at achieving climate goals at different administrative levels (from the local to the national level). Swacha et al (2022) argue that, despite some successes in the development of climate policy in the late 1990s and early 21 st century, Poland is considered one of the main opponents of the ambitious EU climate goals (e.g. Kundzewicz et al, 2019;Skjaerseth, 2018;Karaczun, 2018).…”

“…Instead of focusing on specific issues such as the Polish energy policy or decarbonisation, a small group of researchers has tried to characterise and evaluate Polish climate policy in its entirety (e.g. Swacha et al, 2022;Kundzewicz et al, 2019;Skjaerseth, 2018). This study aims to partially fill this gap by identifying the perception and attitudes of young Poles towards climate change, as well as how they assess the progress and effectiveness of the Polish government's climate policy with the use of a pilot survey conducted between April and June 2022.…”

“…As a member of the European Union and with obligations following the European Green Deal, Poland is required to develop and implement climate policy in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so climate neutrality can be achieved by 2050. In reality, its involvement in climate policy is very weak (Swacha et al, 2022). As every citizen of the Republic of Poland is also an EU citizen, this gives rise to certain obligations, such as active participation in the creation and implementation of climate policy within the framework of civil society.…”