The Durability of EU Climate and Energy Governance in an Era of Turbulence

The European Union has faced a succession of compound challenges - from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine, cost of living and energy crises and rising geopolitical competition - which have challenged its climate and energy transition ambitions, in particular its flagship ‘Green Deal’. In response to these challenges, it has adopted a series of new initiatives - from the Recovery & Resilience Facility with its focus on climate spending to the REPowerEU plan to reduce energy dependence on Russia and facilitate the green energy transition. However, some of these initiatives were meant at the outset to be only temporary or time limited, while they incorporate potentially conflicting objectives and priorities. In addition, in this context of turbulence, EU energy and climate policies have become increasingly contested. Politicisation by opponents - from affected industrial stakeholders, to protest movements and hostile populist, far right and centre-right parties - acts as a source of pressure influencing both the implementation of the EU Green Deal and the level of climate ambitions going forward. This raises the question: how durable and resilient is the EU climate and energy governance framework that has emerged through the polycrisis? The paper investigates this question drawing from, and combining, the policy studies literature on policy durability, feedback and change on the one hand, with the literature on climate policy contestation and politicisation on the other, to identify factors of destabilisation and resilience. The empirical focus is on the operation and implementation of the EU’s energy and climate governance framework for meeting the 2030 EU targets, drawing on a series of in depth case studies. Considering the role of key actors involved in shaping the main policy priorities of the new Commission, including through interviews and primary document analysis, we explore how these might affect the design of the 2040 emissions targets; whether - and why - temporary mechanisms evolve into more permanent features; and, ultimately, the degree of continuity, change and durability of EU climate and energy governance in an era of turbulence.