Abstract
This article uses the concept of ‘obligated policy transfer’ (OPT) to analyse the impact of crisis on climate and energy policy in the European Union. First, it reviews the strengths and limitations of some variants of institutionalism in providing insight into how crises might impact on policy. It explains the underdeveloped concept of OPT and how it is highly appropriate for analysing the EU institutional system and EU policies. OPT is a type of policy transfer that is both voluntary and coercive: Member States voluntarily commit to a policy that is subsequently enforced back on them by a supranational institution during the implementation phase. Importantly, the ideational environment affects how an institutional system develops policy. Crises have impacted on the ideational environmental of the EU by damaging the legitimacy of EU integration. This has exposed structural weaknesses in the system, created institutional change and affected the development of climate and energy policy. Specifically, the analysis reveals that crises have the greatest impact on the agenda-setting and legislative phases of policy transfer in the EU because these are the most ‘voluntary’ phases for Member States. Ultimately, the article provides a way of thinking about the institutional structure of the EU that can help explain institutional change and policy outcomes.
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Notes
Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) is an OECD term for the group of countries comprising Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The history of the UNFCCC illustrates this difficulty, most notably demonstrated at the 2009 Copenhagen Conference. Although the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 was noteworthy in being the world’s first universal legally binding agreement on climate change, all countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are not legally binding nor enforceable in the way that EU targets are, or at least aim to be.
The ordinary legislative procedure originates from the codecision procedure, which was introduced in 1992. Codecision was renamed by the Lisbon Treaty (which entered into force in 2009).
Not to be confused with the European Council.
The reform in question is a market stability reserve for the ETS, a tool to raise the price of emissions allowances by withdrawing the surplus allowances from the market in line with climate-related targets. The initial European Commission proposal had set out a timeline of introducing the MSR in 2021, but moved the introduction date forward to 2019.
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Quahe, S. EU in crisis: what implications for climate and energy policy?. Asia Eur J 16, 169–182 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-018-0504-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-018-0504-y