The Impact of the European Green Deal on EU Environmental Policy

• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Susanna Paleari
• DOI: 10.1177/10704965221082222
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2022, Vol. 31(2) 196–220

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10704965221082222

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The Impact of the

European Green Deal on

EU Environmental Policy

Susanna Paleari

1



Abstract

The European Green Deal is the cornerstone of a comprehensive strategic package

(European Green Deal Strategic Framework, EGDSF) which aims at transforming the

EU into a climate-neutral and competitive economy by 2050. The present paper

analyses the EGDSF policy design and investigates how it will affect EU environmental

policy. It highlights that environmental policy areas are not characterized by the same

level of ambition and are not equally equipped in terms of legislative initiatives (setting

regulatory and economic instruments) to deliver on that ambition. When considering

both these aspects, the policy areas of climate and energy (including GHG emissions

from transport) emerge as the driving force of the EGDSF. Instead, in the biodiversity

policy area, there is an evident mismatch between environmental objectives and

legislative initiatives, which, in the long term, could jeopardize the achievement of all

the key EGD goals, given their indivisibility.

Keywords

European Green Deal, policy design, strategic objectives, environmental legislation,

environmental transition

Introduction

The European Green Deal (EGD) was presented by the European Commission (EC) in

2019 as the new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a resource-eff‌icient

1

Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth (IRCrES), National Research Council of Italy (CNR),

Milan, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Susanna Paleari, Department of Social Science and Humanities, Cultural Heritage, Research Institute on

Sustainable Economic Growth (IRCrES), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Via Corti 12, Milan

20133, Italy.

Email: susanna.paleari@ircres.cnr.it

and competitive economy, where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases

(GHGs) in 2050 (EC, 2019). Building on the EGD, about 20 strategic documents have

been adopted (hereinafter referred to as European Green Deal Strategic Framework

(EGDSF), which, consisting of hundreds of pages, establish ambitious objectives and

schedule an impressive number of initiatives to achieve them.

The EGD is the third growth strategy shaped by the EU in the current millennium.

The 2000 Lisbon Strategy was to transform the EU into ‘the most competitive and

dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’(European Council, 2000). The

environmental objectives were added later to the Strategy, resulting in a lack of general

coherence form the outset (Steuer & Berger, 2010, p. 1). Environmental issues were

largely marginalized in the Lisbon process and only some ‘win–win’solutions for the

economy and the environment were prioritized (Farmer, 2012, p. 7). The ‘EU 2020

Strategy’, released in 2010, better integrated the environmental dimension into the

European growth model (Bongardt & Torres, 2010, p. 139), by identifying the en-

vironment as one of its f‌ive headline goals. In the end, however, it merely reaff‌irmed the

climate and energy targets set out by the Climate and Energy 20–20–20 Package

(European Council, 2007). This explains why the Strategy has been overshadowed by

the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (Becker et al., 2020).

The EGD outlines an unprecedented attempt to foster the environmental transition in

the EU and make it irreversible, based on deeply transformative policies, affecting the

whole economy. Within this new growth strategy, the environmental dimension is no

more undersized compared to the economic one, as it emerges from the seven key EGD

policy goals, namely, achieving climate neutrality; supplying clean, secure and af-

fordable energy; promoting sustainable mobility; encouraging the transition to a cir-

cular economy (CE); creating a toxic-free environment; preserving Europe’s natural

capital and designing a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system. These

goals are indivisible from the scientif‌ic point of view, so that we cannot achieve carbon

neutrality without substantial progress in all the other thematic pillars (Charveriat &

Holme, 2021, p. 8). The expected contribution of each environmental policy area to the

overall transition is, however, different and poses specif‌ic challenges.

The present paper focuses on the policy design of the EGDSF to provide a better

understanding of how it will affect EU environmental policy and of the related crit-

icalities. After a description of the methods and materials (Methods and Materials), the

paper analyses the environmental objectives, set by the EGDSF, which should drive the

transition in each environmental policy area, to investigate their stringency and level of

ambition compared to the pre-EGD framework (The Environmental Objectives of the

EGDSF). Secondly, it considers the legislative initiatives scheduled by the EGDSF to

deliver on that ambition (The Impact of the EGDPF on Environmental Legislation).

Indeed, although the EGDSF provides for a wide range of different implementation

measures, it makes an extensive use of legislation to meet its goals. For each envi-

ronmental policy area, the extent and content of the planned legislative proposals is

examined to assess whether they are proportionated to the related environmental

objectives. The mismatch between environmental objectives and planned legislative

initiatives may be a relevant barrier to translating the EGD into reality, especially if the

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