Policy Coordination in the EU’s Climate Change Adaptation Policy: an Analysis of Interservice Consultations

This paper analyses processes of policy coordination around the development of climate change adaptation strategies within the European Commission. Policy coordination is a key challenge when tackling complex issues, which span a range of domains. Climate change adaptation is one such issue, as it concerns a range of sectors of the economy and the policies targeted at them, including agriculture, transport and water management. Understanding the extent to and way(s) in which climate change adaptation policies are coordinated therefore offers a good opportunity to understanding the dynamics and outcomes of policy coordination processes more generally. Within the European Commission, several mechanisms have been developed to foster the integration and coherence of policies. A prominent mechanism in this regard is the ‘Inter-Service Consultation’ (ISC), during which interested Directorates General (DGs) can give input into draft proposals by another DG. Based on an analysis of the input given in ISCs around four key strategic European Commission documents on climate change adaptation, the paper studies (1) the scope of participation in these ISCs, (2) what types of input were given during the ISCs and (3) whether and, if so, how this input affected the eventual documents adopted by the European Commission. The paper contributes to the literature in a number of ways. First, it sheds more light on processes of policy coordination within the European Commission, tying in with a longstanding debate on the level of fragmentation and coordination of Commission policy-making. Second, the paper contributes to our understanding of the nascent field of climate change adaptation policies, which has so far received far less attention than policy-making on climate change mitigation. Finally, the paper uses a novel data source (ISC documents), which are not made public but offer important insights into the European Commission’s internal coordination processes.