Moving the State of Art Forward: Political Ecology and EU Environmental Policy and Politics

European Union (EU) environmental policy rests upon a paradox. It is generally accepted in the literature that the EU has had profound and positive effects upon its member states' environmental policy ambition and that it has been a leader in international environmental diplomacy. However, the defining characteristic of EU environmental policy underpinning its success - framing policy as a market correcting measure - has also been its Achilles' heel. EU environmental policy has been grounded within a capitalist growth model that has contributed to worsening environmental outcomes and which has privileged the interests of large corporate actors. Moreover, since 2022 there has started to be push back at the national and European levels against elements of the EU’s Green Deal, and against neocolonial tendencies represented by policies such as the Critical Raw Materials Act. How do we explain this contestation and the internal tensions within the EU environmental policy paradigm and what are the implications for its future development? This paper suggests that the framework of political ecology can bring novel insights to the field of EU environmental studies to help unpack and explain the trajectory of EU environmental policy. It will be argued that the economistic rationale and win-win narrative underpinning the EU environmental policy paradigm has foreclosed more radical policy opportunities and sown the seeds of current challenges and trends such as the roll out of the Omnibus simplification packages. It makes a contribution to the field by suggesting new avenues for analysing and understanding EU environmental policy and politics moving beyond the traditional approaches that dominate the state of the art.