Towards harder soft governance? Monitoring climate policy in the EU

Figures & data

Table 1. A comparison of the Monitoring Mechanism Decision (2004) and Regulation (2013).

Aspect	Decision No 280/2004/EC (MMD)	Regulation (EU) No 525/2013 (MMR)
Focus
Length	7 pages.	18 pages (plus 11 pages of Annexes).
Quality assurance	Contains provisions for a quality assurance (Article 4 [2a]).	Marginally more detailed provisions (Article 6).
Low carbon strategies	No reporting required.	Requires the EU Member States to report on their low carbon development strategies (Article 4).
Reporting on policies	Reporting on policies included in Article 3(2).	Separate article related to reporting on policies (Article 13), but also weakening key provisions on quantitative ex-ante and ex-post reporting (‘where available’ clauses).
Projections	Included in other articles (see above).	Separate article (14) on reporting projections.
Adaptation and financial/technology report to developing countries	No reporting required.	Specific new provisions on reporting on national adaptation actions (Article 15) and on reporting on financial and technology support to developing countries (Article 16).
Expert review	Relies on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) review mechanisms (Article 8b).	Creates a new, EU-based expert review on greenhouse gas emissions, to be organised by the Commission (Article 19).
Monitoring outputs: publicity
Monitoring data availability	Data publicised on the Öko-Institute Website; later through EIONET; summary EEA reports on the data from 2011 onwards.	Data publicised on EIONET website, in the EEA PAMs database, and in the EEA PAMs data viewer; summary EEA reports from 2013; from 2017 comparisons between different reporting rounds.
Links with existing EU and international reporting cycles
Links with other reporting streams	Links to international reporting (UNFCCC, Kyoto).	Links to international reporting (UNFCCC, Kyoto), but also to the effort sharing decision in Article 1(d/g) [Decision No 406/2009/EC] as well as to auctioning revenue from the EU ETS in Article 1(e).
Incorporating monitoring into other policy planning processes
Incorporation in policy planning	None.	Included in the State of the Energy Union Reports and the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs)

Source: Draws on Knodt and Schoenefeld (2020); interviews, document analysis.

Knodt, M., & Schoenefeld, J. J. (2020). Harder soft governance in European climate and energy policy: Following a new trend? Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning.

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