Open thematic sessions > Strong integration for a ‘strong sustainability’? Rethinking the European Union’s integration of environmental policies before and after the Green Deal

Contacts

Julien Pelet : julien.pelet@engees.unistra.fr

Joana Guerrin : joana.guerrin@inrae.fr

Hugo Canihac : canihac@unistra.fr

Cadrage et objectif de la session

The history of environmental policies in the European Union (EU) is punctuated by the introduction of initiatives and the deployment of instruments aimed at integrating environmental issues into other policies. The challenge of integrating the environment was defined as early as the first European environment programme, adopted in 1973 and later affirmed through the introduction of the environmental policy integration principle (EPI) in the 1986 Single European Act. As pointed out by Lenschow, the institutionalisation of this principle went hand in hand with that of the concept of ‘sustainable development’, especially from the 1980s (Lenschow, 2002). However, retrospective analyses of the implementation of EPI identify a number of obstacles to its operationalisation, thus also weakening the meaning of the principle of sustainable development. Indeed, European environmental policies have historically been implemented on a sectoral basis by specific DGs of the European Commission (DG ENV and DG CLIMA) whose officers have faced difficulties translating operationally the EPI in other highly sectorised policies beyond the political commitments (Lenschow, 2002). Besides, the first strategies aimed at integrating environmental policies date back to the 1990s but, in the context of economic uncertainty in the 2000s, their ambition was reduced and their implementation mainly confined to the climate field (Benson and Jordan, 2013).

Now, after several decades marked by timid advances, a renewed interest in integration and sustainablity is being expressed in European policies. For instance, collaborations are intensifying between EU policy-makers and researchers in the field of transition studies due to an increased political interest in knowledge about how to steer transitions to sustainability (Turnheim et al. 2020). Moreover, a unit and a topic center dedicated to sustainability transitions were recently set up in the European Environment Agency. The interest for integration is also accompanied by the deployment of new initiatives, such as the "Missions" that the Commission is putting in place as part of the 2019 European Green Deal and whose portfolio is managed in coordination by several DGs. Nevertheless, this context is also marked by the predominant place taken by certain issues and types of knowledge on the EU agenda, such as climate, which tends to overshadow other, older areas of environmental policy (Delreux and Happaerts, 2016).

This panel aims to cast a fresh light on the emergence, institutionalisation and challenges faced by this renewed effort at integrating environmental policies into EU’s policies. So doing, it will also examine how it fosters, or hampers, the search for ‘strong sustainability’. To this end, it seeks to develop and update the seminal work of A. Lenschow and A. Jordan, who analysed the trajectories and bottlenecks of environmental integration in EU policies during the 2000s (Lenschow, 2002; Jordan and Lenschow 2008, 2010). The papers will help to answer the following questions: How has the integration of European environmental policies unfolded across sectors? What changes in the European political and administrative field have accompanied these developments? How does the European Green Deal reshape the sectoral balances of power? The papers expected for this panel may be structured around three (non-exclusive) thematic entries:

i) Through actors: their influence and the interplay of interests in the autonomisation or integration of certain environmental policy sectors, such as climate policies, the effect of integration on actors coalitions, services, DGs, etc.

ii) Through instruments: by reconstructing the development of instruments designed to facilitate, implement, or evaluate the integration of European environmental policies, as well as their circulation, effects, or resistance to these instruments - or discussing the integrating potential of certain policy instruments.

iii) Through ideas: by following the circulation of conceptual innovations (Meadowcroft et Fiorino, 2017) in European environmental policies (transformative change, transition management, nature-based solutions, etc.) and the way in which integration objectives and sectoral relations are reconfigured; or by realising a cognitive analysis of these innovations and the integrative ambition of the environmental policies they propose.

References

Benson D et Jordan AJ, 2013,« Environmental policy », European Union Politics 4th edition, Oxford University Press.

Delreux Tom et Happaerts Sander, 2016, Environmental Policy and Politics in the European Union, Bloomsbury Publishing.

Jordan Andrew J. et Lenschow Andrea, 2008, Innovation in Environmental Policy?: Integrating the Environment for Sustainability, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Jordan Andrew et Lenschow Andrea, 2010, « Environmental policy integration: a state of the art review »,. Environmental Policy and Governance, vol. 20, n° 3, p. 147‑158.

Lenschow Andrea, 2002, Environmental Policy Integration: Greening Sectoral Policies in Europe, Routledge.

Meadowcroft James et Fiorino Daniel J., 2017, Conceptual Innovation in Environmental Policy, MIT Press.

Turnheim Bruno, Asquith Mike et Geels Frank, 2020, « Making sustainability transitions research policy-relevant: Challenges at the science-policy interface »,. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, vol. 34, p. 116‑120.