Overcoming Policy Fragmentation: Towards Increased Policy Coherence Through the European Green Deal?

The European Green Deal (EGD) was developed by the European Commission as an integrated agenda for a climate-neutral economy. Its central aim is to align climate action with energy policy, environmental protection, social, and economic objectives. This integrated approach represents a shift away from siloed models of EU environmental governance, including climate policy. At the same time, the political and geopolitical context in which the EGD has been implemented has evolved rapidly, shaped by the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, intensifying geoeconomic competition in clean technologies, and growing domestic contestation of climate policies. This paper offers an explanatory investigation of how policy domains associated with the Green Deal’s integrative ambition have been incorporated into key EU climate and energy governance documents over time. By examining changes in the keyword salience of EGD-related policy areas before and after the publication of the Green Deal, the paper identifies patterns that can serve as a basis for further research on policy integration dynamics in EU climate and energy policy. The analysis focuses on two central components of EU climate governance. First, Member States’ National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) are examined as instruments through which EU climate and energy objectives are operationalised at the national level. Second, Environment Council Conclusions on UNFCCC COP negotiations are analysed as expressions of collective EU priorities, particularly relevant for understanding how policy orientations evolve across Member States in the context of international climate negotiations. Methodologically, the paper adopts a text-as-data approach to analyse the relative salience of policy domains associated with the European Green Deal that are analytically distinguishable from climate and energy policy fields. These include nature-related terms, just transition, circular economy, pollution, and agri-food systems. Normalised keyword frequencies are used to compare pre-Green Deal and post-Green Deal periods across the selected documents. The findings indicate that policy areas associated with the European Green Deal have become increasingly salient in both national and EU-level climate policy documents, suggesting a trend towards more integrated climate policymaking. In the case of NECPs, the analysis shows that the average plan contains more frequent references to nature, just transition, circular economy, and agri-food systems after the publication of the EGD, while references to pollution decline. However, these aggregate findings do not capture national-level dynamics, which vary heavily across Member States and constitute an important avenue for further research. Turning to Environment Council Conclusions, references to nature, circular economy, just transition, and—unlike in NECPs—pollution increase following the publication of the EGD, while agri-food references remain relatively stable. However, further research is requited to distuingish the extent to which these developments can be attributed to the Green Deal. However, the identified decline in nature-related references after 2023 raises questions about shifting political priorities and the durability of integrated environmental policymaking under changing geopolitical and competitiveness-oriented pressures. Understanding whether this trend is temporary or structural will be key to assessing the future coherence of EU environmental governance.