European Union

As the climate continues to change at alarming rates, many have lost faith in traditional international approaches to address the issue. As a result, climate policy innovation and associated experimentation are en vogue.[1] The thinking goes that if old approaches are perceived to be failing, we need new and innovative ones. The hope is that successful innovations will spread as policy-makers, civil society and businesses learn from one another. But what do we know about climate change governance experimentation, and are these hopes justified?

On the face of it nobody directly opposes the idea of experimenting. After all, experimentation drives tremendous progress in the natural sciences, so why should we not apply the approach more widely to governance? The idea also fits well with the evidence-based policy-making agenda, another fashionable idea, holding that experiments may be a key source of evidence for policy-makers. However, there is more to experimentation than readily meets the eye. A recent workshop on “Climate Change Policy and Governance: Initiation, Experimentation, Evaluation” organised by the Innovations in Climate Governance (INOGOV) research network including 26 European countries, focused on how experiments materialise and challenge existing policies, practices and regulatory systems. Thirty scholars from Europe, the US and Australia discussed new empirical and theoretical analyses, showing how diverse the topic of experimentation is. The emerging discussions highlighted that conducting, interpreting and using experiments may not be as straightforward as one may think.

First of all: what are experiments? There were numerous partly conflicting ideas among the workshop participants. Some broadly viewed all policies as potentially failing experiments in the sense that no one can ever exactly foresee policy outcomes in complex socio-ecological systems. Others took more narrow definitions as a starting point with specific criteria that echo statistical experimental designs. Such experiments can, for example, explore a novel policy instrument that is applied and evaluated in restricted regions before being adopted nationally. Our understanding of experiments will affect how we approach and use them. Crucially, experimenting also raises tricky issues of risks, duties and wider social implications. For example, who is to blame if a governance experiment goes wrong and who will bear the consequences? Leaving a legacy, experiments are never fully reversible. They will, at the very least, provide a new perspective on what is doable, and after that the world is never completely the same.

In many cases the purpose of experimenting is nothing short of learning how to change the world. But a single experiment will not suffice – multiple and repeated experiments in different places may be necessary. Crucial issues thus relate to learning and transferability. How can the experiences gained in one experiment be transferred to another? Some will argue that the context is so decisive that possibilities for duplication are limited,[2] but we know from practical experience that policy solutions are copied and multiplied within and across sectors and countries. Thus ‘upscaling’ happens. The mechanisms of these ‘upscaling’ processes and transitions are an area of considerable theoretical and practical interest.

On the whole, the workshop highlighted that there are many outstanding questions to answer before we may experiment our way out of climate change. This is of course not stopping politicians from touting experimentation as a potential solution to various societal issues: for example, following a recent national election, Finland’s Prime Minister-elect Juha Sipilä has declared that Finland should become an “experimental society”. But what it takes for an experimental society to ‘come true’ and whether this is even desirable cries out for in-depth research and an informed public debate.

With this year’s climate summit in Paris rapidly approaching, the INOGOV network is a good place to nurture this debate. Focusing on where climate governance innovations originate, how they diffuse and what effects they have, it seeks to bring together communities of scholars, as well as civil society and businesses, in order to accelerate humanity’s search for solutions to address climate change. Whether experimentation is among these solutions is one of the critical questions the network will discuss.

[1] See also Castán Broto, V. &  Bulkeley 2013. A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities. Global Environmental Change 23: 92–102

[2] This has been a lively debate in for example development studies. Thus D.K. Forbes in ‘The geography of underdevelopment’ (Croom Helm 1984) refers to the impossibility to replicate development success stories.

The post Can we experiment our way out of climate change? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Donald TUSK, President of the European Council, at the European Parliament.

Download this video here.

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) has provided a forum for dialogue between Europeans and Asians since 1996.

Download this video here.

This is the second of two blogposts on Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
The first one is available here.

Only 6 cents the word!

Ten years after the premature death of his constitutional treaty, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, now aged 89, is still an undiscouraged believer in the European project. Concerned by the current crisis of the European Union, he proposes in a recent book a project names ‘Europa’, which an inspired plume – himself or the publisher? – felt the need to subtitle ‘Europe’s last chance’.

The utter cliché of this subtitle notwithstanding – after all, even Jean-Claude Juncker thought it was necessary to dramatize his mandate at the helm of the Commission with the same words – an essay by Giscard always deserves a look. He certainly has a record of European leadership that spans from the 1970s, when he was a driver of both enlargement – paving the way for Greece, Spain, and Portugal – and deepening of the community, through the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS).

It turns out that only one third of this already very thin book (184 pages printed in very large font, hardly more than 30,000 words sold at € 16.90, which makes roughly 6 cents the word) is actually dedicated to the ‘Europa’ project that gave the publication its title. The rest is a kind of recapitulative short-cut of how the EU got where it is today. Apart from some nice anecdotes – like the moment in Bremen in 1978 when he invented an English name for the forthcoming ‘European currency unit’ with the aim of producing an acronym that would recall a French medieval currency – there is strictly speaking no added value in these fireside souvenirs.

The ‘Europa’ project’ itself is, in a nutshell, yet another draft for a two-speed Europe, with a core of 12 in a Union of 28. The core would naturally work towards fiscal harmonisation by 2030, backed up by a European treasury (issuing Eurobonds) and based on a principle of redistributive solidarity. Note that Giscard does not anticipate any major popular resistance to fiscal union – on the contrary, he expects it to be very well received by the European people – and he foresees harmonisation of retirement age in the long run.

‘Europa’ would be run by a ‘directoire’ (in parallel to the EU and Eurozone institutions). For reasons of democratic legitimacy it would also convene a ‘Congress of the people’ composed of MEPs and national MPs. The tone of the proposal is itself very ‘directoire’-like, especially when it comes to identify the eligible members of the future core-Europa: ‘The participation of Ireland and Finland may also be envisaged’. Good to know! Envisaged by whom? Under what conditions? Would they even be asked?

The book is rife with self-congratulation: oh, the days when Helmut Schmidt and himself created and managed the European Council! Of course, their successors at the heads of today’s European governments entirely lack the necessary leadership qualities and the indispensible vision (he does not mention that his friend Helmut, who wrote the preface to the book, used to advise each politician with ‘visions’ to go and consult an ophthalmologist).

The author also has a strong tendency to over-simplify things (despite, obviously, better knowledge). Three examples: 1) Needless to say that Chirac and only Chirac is to blame for the French ‘no’ vote to the constitutional treaty in May 2005. 2) The resurgence of national identities is mainly due to the scapegoating of Brussels by the current generation of European politicians. 3) if Europe is perceived as ‘the sick man of the planet’, the main reason is ‘permanent Euro-bashing by the Anglo-Saxon press’.

It saddens me to write this, but reading this project is an experience that comes close to marking an undergraduate term paper while not being able to suppress some deep sighs. Had I to mark this text, what would I be supposed to put in the margin of sentences like: ‘Thus the project of Robert Schuman was approved by six states, more or less from the Holy Roman Empire. These were the founding countries. They have remained so until today.’

Unlike the average undergraduate student, however, Giscard is touring schools and media with his term paper, as if there was any serious chance of seeing his project only even discussed by any current European leader. He has also set up a website, as thin as the book itself, which even in the core-Europa of twelve, only Francophone readers will be able to consult (perhaps that’s because he is, as he proudly recalls on the front page, a member of the Académie Française). If you do happen to be among these, you can consult or download the book for free (click here).

This post should by no means be understood as cheap scorn or mockery. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has great merits both for European integration and for modernising the French Republic without being prisoner to ideological dogma (some of his reforms were more leftist and lasting than Mitterrand’s!). And his advocacy in favour of European integration is sincere and wholehearted. One untimely, uninspired, and unnecessary book will not change this record.

The post Undiscouraged, but also uninspired appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The European Union's commitment to effective multilateralism, with the United Nations at its core, is a central element of its external action.

Download this video here.

I love words. I work in public affairs and communications, so I love words. As public affairs consultants, we write all day long. We write, rewrite, rephrase, edit, amend, tweak, this is all we do: we play with words, we build strong cases and look for convincing arguments.

Read industry position papers and Commissioners’ speeches, they use the same jargon. This jargon is comfortable. It gives us an ‘esprit de corps’, as it were. However, the jargon also clouds our discussions. As consultants we try not to fall into the trap and propose alternatives. It is not always easy. In the energy policy area, 10 phrases are on everyone’s lips. They are so commonly used that we tend to forget what they really mean and where they’re coming from.

1. Energy Union

Term coined in 2014 by then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to instigate common gas purchasing and strengthen the EU’s negotiating powers towards external suppliers Russia. This is now a catch-all phrase for our entire Energy and Climate policy programme for  the next five years – which in effect no longer includes obligatory common gas purchasing.

2. Decarbonisation

This is not even a word in the English dictionary (about this, I encourage everyone to read the Commission’s publication on Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications, which is an excellent read). Brussels is not Oxford, so let’s continue to encourage Europe to ‘decarbonise’ its economy, just like we want to ‘internalise external costs’.

3. Level-playing field

You will rarely find a stakeholder not asking for a ‘level-playing field’. More often than not, it will be accompanied by words of caution against ‘unintended consequences’ and calls for the popular ‘regulatory certainty’.

4. Energy subsidies

There is a tension about subsidies, almost a love/hate relationship about them. You dislike them unless they are directed to you. Whilst they are widely acknowledged for distorting the market, they can be accepted under certain conditions, for example for technologies that are not yet commercially available. Their phasing-out is recommended, but Member States continue to use them massively, both for renewables and fossil fuels. Figures are usually thrown into the debate, with no strong evidence backing them.

5. Carbon Leakage

When I first heard this phrase in 2009, I remember thinking there were actually molecules of carbon physically leaking from somewhere. There are not. In effect, this is about industries likely to relocate outside Europe (and emitting carbon there) due to additional costs incurred by EU climate policy (namely, the Emissions Trading Scheme). Most expert studies have so far concluded that there is no evidence of carbon leakage. This might change when/if the carbon price increases.

6. Completion of the internal energy market

Since Heads of States agreed to complete the internal energy market by 2014 (February 2011 Council Conclusions), and to “allow gas and electricity to flow freely”, this has become the mantra of EU energy policy. Progress has definitively been made – with more interconnections, more diversity of supplies and some convergence in prices. But who would really argue that the EU energy market prevails over the 28 national energy markets?

7. Hardware

A new piece of vocabulary that emerged with the Energy Union. This is neither a computer nor a piece of electronics, but rather the physical infrastructure needed to complete the internal energy market: gas and electricity interconnections, pipelines, LNG terminals.

8. Software

Again, a creation of the Energy Union.  Should be understood as the regulatory framework building links between domestic gas and electricity markets and making cross-border flows possible. Be it network codes or the reform of the power market design, they all fall under ‘The Software’.

9. Intermittent

Don’t describe renewable energies as intermittent. EWEA, the wind energy association, “recommends using the qualifier “variable” when referring to wind power generation, rather than “intermittent”, which means starting and stopping at irregular intervals.” Now you know.

10. Clean coal

A very bold oxymoron, and a good marketing tool to promote Carbon Capture and Storage.

The EU energy lingo goes beyond these few examples. I could expand on ‘windfall profits’, ‘technology neutrality’, ‘capacity mechanisms’, ‘prosumers’, ‘the energy-only market’ and many others. If you have any personal preferences, feel free to share. For my part, I am off writing about the plenary vote on ‘Indirect Land-Use Change’ – my favourite.

Clara Lemaire

Monday night’s live TV interview with Alexis Tsipras, the first since he became Greece’s prime minister, has generated headlines because of his declaration that, if the deal he ultimately strikes with eurozone creditors includes measures he promised to avoid, he’d put it up for a referendum.

But the three-hour-long session contained some other nuggets that illustrated anyone who thought Tsipras was going soft after reshuffling his bailout negotiating team on Monday morning may have miscalculated.

At the very top of the show, for instance, he accused Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, of “political weakness” for failing to admit the Greek bailout has been “a failure”.

For eurozone crisis obsessives, another exchange was particularly notable: Tsipras claimed that as part of the critical agreement on February 20 to extend Greece’s bailout through June, he received a verbal commitment that the European Central Bank would allow Athens to sell more short-term debt.