Coordinating Climate Policy Across Sectors: Comparing National Coordination for the Social Climate Fund

In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on integrating EU climate objectives across different policy areas for ambitious climate action. The European Green Deal further expands climate policy to other sectors, such as maritime transport, international trade, and social policy (Oberthür & Von Homeyer, 2023). This development of climate policy integration at the EU level is likely to affect how Member States coordinate their efforts for EU climate policy. Expanding climate policy to new sectors presents additional coordination challenges for Member States, as it may require more extensive coordination between departments and levels of government to ensure a coherent national position in Brussels. Yet, the implications of these developments in EU climate policy for national coordination in Member States need to be studied in more detail. This paper therefore analyses and compares how different national coordination systems deal with the challenge of coordinating a position for EU decision-making on cross-sectoral climate policy. It does so through a comparative case study, analysing the formal and informal national coordination mechanisms in four Member States during the policy-making process for the Social Climate Fund. The Social Climate Fund is a fund aimed at addressing the social impact of the new EU emissions trading system for buildings, road transport, and additional sectors (ETS-2). This case study allows us to examine whether and how Member States coordinate a coherent and timely position for a policy proposal that combines three policy areas: climate, social, and fiscal policy. The paper contributes to the literature on EU climate governance by studying the implications of EU climate policy integration at the national level, analysing both the formal and informal ways in which climate policies are prepared in Member States. It also adds to the literature on Europeanisation by considering how national systems adjust to EU adaptational pressures.