Thread by @Cladupont

I am very happy to announce a new, open access, publication in @JEI_Publication 'The Covid-19 crisis: a critical juncture for EU climate policy development?', authored with @OberthuerSeb and @IngmarVon, @GovPA_UGent @govtran ➡️ tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

We analyse whether the EU's response to the #COVID19 pandemic can be seen as a potential critical juncture for EU climate policy development, by tracing EU climate policy developments before and during 2020.

A critical juncture can be considered an event that moves policy/institutional development onto a new path, implying that it causes change.

But the direction (negative/neutral/positive) and scope (incremental/significant) of the change or effects are also key aspects to investigate...

While it is too soon to tell whether Covid-19 will be a critical juncture, we already identify potential for positive change. But, we argue that EU climate policy was already undergoing (transformational?) change with the European Green Deal (EGD), that was published in 2019.

The EU's Covid-19 recovery plan follows the path set by the EGD when it comes to climate policy. There were some initial delays to EGD policy plans in the early stages of Covid-19, but the recovery plan moved to accelerate or extend aspects of the EGD.

It may therefore be possible that the EGD is itself a potential critical juncture.

We examine the role of policy entrepreneurship and politicisation to explain our results, and, the short story is that these two variables interacted and reinforced each other, allowing positive and - potentially - transformative change in EU climate policy.

However (caveat!): The significance of both the EGD and the Covid-19 crisis on EU climate development will ultimately depend on the (details of) implementation of both the EGD and the recovery plan (e.g. watch out for policy integration). #WatchThisSpace #EuropeanGreenDeal #EU

Thanks to @drsarahwolff and @stella_ladi for guiding us as we prepared the article.