Pathways and obstacles to integrated environmental policymaking in the EU: Synergising the multilevel frameworks governing climate change and air pollution

Unlocking synergies while avoiding trade-offs between different environmental objectives is an ongoing challenge for EU policymaking. Interconnected problems like climate change and air pollution demand integrated solutions, as does implementation of the European Green Deal (EGD). Indeed, to maximise effectiveness, these problems’ governance must be integrated not only horizontally within EU institutions but also vertically, across levels of governance. Yet, while integration is central to the EU’s environmental objectives, institutions implementing them often work in silos, limiting coordination in policymaking between different sectors and governance levels. I thus analyse whether and how the EGD’s implementation affected policy and vertical integration over time, with integration between climate and clean air governance as a case study. My analysis applies a processual lens, defining integration as not just coherence in outcomes, but also coordination in the preceding policy processes: Climate-clean air integration thus requires officials, experts and stakeholders working on both issues to be involved in the formulation and implementation of policies that maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs between climate change and air pollution mitigation. Further, for vertical integration, actors from different levels should be represented in this process, given their crucial role in environmental policy success. The EGD is an integrated strategy overall: It addresses all governance levels and sets ambitious climate-neutrality and zero-pollution targets. Realising these targets, however, will require further policy changes in relevant sectors and governance levels. It is these changes that I will analyse. I trace the EGD’s effectiveness in increasing climate-clean air integration on the EU-, national- and city-levels, using Italy with Milan and Finland with Helsinki as case studies. For each jurisdiction, I evaluate climate-clean air integration in relevant policy processes from before and after the Green Deal, using an analytical framework developed specifically for multilevel comparison. Information is sourced from policy documents as well as 17 key informant interviews with experts and policymakers from all jurisdictions. I thus triangulate intertemporal with cross-jurisdictional comparison and document analysis with interviews in order to establish where policy and vertical integration occurred, where it is lacking, and what causes underlie these patterns. Such an analysis combining insights from policy integration and multilevel governance theory is novel, as literature has generally treated these topics separately, and lets me gauge the EGD’s effects on both horizontal and vertical integration in climate and clean air governance. Initial findings suggest the EGD has had only limited effect on horizontal policy integration and proved less successful still in advancing vertical multilevel integration: While climate-clean air integration progressed considerably in some jurisdictions, it unraveled in others, so I find no coherent approach across the levels. Key barriers include systemic reasons, rooted in the EU’s general multilevel governance framework and its specific climate and clean air regimes, as well as more contextual political factors. Bearing political constraints in mind, I will suggest targeted policy and legal reforms to help overcome systemic fragmentation in policymaking. Lessons learned can also be applied to other policy areas.