Three Decades of Learning-by-Doing: The Evolving Climate Change Mitigation Policy of the European Union

Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of EU climate change mitigation policy over the past 30 years. It divides the development of EU climate policy into four phases and highlights their links with the international climate policy process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The chapter also analyses the future prospects of EU climate policy in light of the European Commission’s 2019 proposal for a European Green Deal. The chapter shows that in the past three decades, the EU has developed an extensive climate policy framework that reflects the special nature of the EU as a supranational construct of 27 Member States. The EU framework can offer useful lessons for other jurisdictions on how a group of socially and economically diverse countries can cooperate intensively to mitigate climate change. It also includes many important lessons in terms of the governance structures used and alignment with international climate change treaties. However, the chapter also identifies gaps and important room for improvement. These relate to comprehensiveness (such as providing incentives for negative emissions) and governance (such as a long-term target enshrined in law and the creation of an independent scientific advisory body). Furthermore, while the EU’s climate policy framework can be praised for using internal fairness and equity criteria for allocating responsibilities between the Member States and compensating those with fewer resources or critically affected interests, the EU’s mitigation ambition is not based on any explicit criteria for global fairness and equity, and the bloc’s ambition is arguably not in line with the 1.5/2°C temperature goal included in the Paris Agreement.