Advocating harder soft governance for the European Green Deal. Stakeholder perspectives on the revision of the EU governance regulation

Abstract

The Governance Regulation is the central coordination instrument for the European Unions' energy and climate policy. The Regulation is scheduled for revision, as it is misaligned with the updated EU framework and exhibits implementation and enforcement deficits. Our analysis reviews 136 submissions of institutional stakeholders participating in the European Commission's public consultations on the Governance Regulation and interlinked sectoral legislation. Employing a combined quantitative and qualitative text analysis, we examine the most salient issues for different stakeholder groups. We focus on stakeholder demands that address the implementation and enforcement deficits by introducing harder soft governance elements. While we find broad support among stakeholder groups for a revision and the improvement of implementation, Public Authorities exhibit reluctance for further binding elements, with the exception of demands for more precise enforcement mechanisms. While the inclusion of harder soft governance is only of subsidiary interest for non-public stakeholders demands for stronger obligations (e.g. binding national targets), justifications and public participation can be identified. The analysis finally discusses how the further introduction of harder soft governance elements has the potential to advance the EU's energy and climate framework.