From the Green to the Just Transition: How did the EU adapted climate policies during and after the neoliberal era?

Co-investigator: Gianmarco Fifi (London School of Economics and Political Science)

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This project is funded by University of Lincoln Research Resources Allocation Fund (2023-2024) and LSE Seed Fund

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Summary:

This project will investigate the adaptation of the EU’s climate stances between the early 2000s until today. The extant literature has interpreted climate policy as inherently neoliberal in design. Abby Innes (2023), for example, claims that the European sustainable finance agenda suffers from the same inconsistencies of the efficient market hypothesis in neoclassical economics. The idealised abstraction of markets being populated by rational individuals has been argued to pervade European policy-making (Christophers, 2017; Innes, 2023; Konings, 2016). 

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We argue that the dichotomy prevalent within the existing literature between market vs. public solutions to climate change misses the nuance of different interpretation and justifications of private and public interventions. Employing content analysis of policy papers, declarations to the press and meetings’ summaries, the paper argues that during different critical junctures the EU changed interpretation of the public-private nexus as well as of trade-offs between the green transition and social protection. Our preliminary argument is that climate policy has become less market-liberal, while also acknowledging the redistributive distortions that could originate from public intervention.

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Project outputs and research dissemination:

• Paper entitled "From the Green to the Just Transition: How did the EU adapted climate policies during and after the liberal era?"

• International Conference of Europeanises , paper presentation, Sciences Po Lyon, France, July 3-5, 2024.