In the eye of the storm? The European Parliament, the environment and the EU’s crises

ABSTRACT

The European Parliament (EP) has a long-established reputation as an ‘environmental champion’. Yet, environmental policy has potentially been profoundly and negatively affected by the conglomerate of crises that has beset the European Union (EU) since the late 2000s. There has been a swing to the right within the Parliament in recent elections, and the entry of a range environmentally sceptic states to the EU, which may have led to weakening policy ambition. This article uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to analyse whether there has been a shift in the EP’s treatment of legislation, such that it has tried to weaken the policy ambition of proposals since the late 2000s. The analysis finds limited evidence of a general trend to deliberately water down legislation, and overall suggests that despite a less favourable policy context, the EP still can and does exercise a positive influence over EU environmental policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Crises
• enlargement
• environmental champion
• European Parliament
• environmental policy

Acknowledgments

The data analysed in this paper come from a wider project funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2014-183). Thanks are due to Paul Tobin (University of Manchester) for carrying out interviews and legislative coding and to Peter Eckersley (Nottingham Trent University) for legislative coding. A subset of the data used here are analysed in Burns, Eckersley and Tobin  2019. Thanks to the anonymous referees, the editors of the special issue and panel participants at the ECPR Standing Group on EU Conference in Paris, June 2018, at which an earlier version was presented, for their helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are the author’s own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The proposals listed included four proposed in 2015 that were not competed until 2018 – these proposals are not, therefore, included in the wider data analysis as they were completed after the first half of EP8.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2014-183].