As a comprehensive framework and sustainable development strategy, the European Green Deal (EGD, 2019) aims to transform the European Union (EU) into the world’s first climate-neutral economy by 2050. Energy transition is a core component of the EU climate agenda and a key component of this process. In response to the energy emergency caused by the Russian aggression to Ukraine, the EU adopted the REPowerEU plan in May 2022 to accelerate the energy transformation initiated within the EGD and achieve energy autonomy by 2030. The massive deployment of renewable energies is, among other actions, prioritised and elevated to a matter of public interest. However, beyond the change and origin of energy sources, the REPowerEU implementation implies a paradigm shift in energy policy, from a market-based approach to a more interventionist one. In this context, clean energy security becomes the key goal. This paper highlights the new dynamics of the EU energy transition on the path to decarbonization. The aim is to assess whether the measures being implemented from 2022 shape a new energy architecture that has the potential to provide clean energy at affordable prices, while contributing to the EU’s decarbonization agenda. The analysis finds that the new energy approach shifts clean energy security from the climate domain to the security domain, but it exposes certain components which are in conflict with major principle and priorities of the EGD. It concludes that the balance between the security and sustainability dimensions will be key to the success of the net-zero trajectory.

The article investigates how the European Parliament (EP) has been discursively legitimising itself as an actor (and hence also the EU as a polity) in the climate change debate. Following Hurrelmann, Gora & Wagner (2013: 515), the inquiry conceives of political legitimation in a Weberian sense as a social activity that can be empirically observed and tested. Actor-oriented in nature, it adopts the top-down perspective within the legitimation research, with the self-legitimation understood here as practices employed by political elites to positively influence the legitimation process (Hall, Lenz & Obydenkova 2021). Drawing on the insights of the discursive institutionalism theory (Schmidt 2008, 2020), the article works with a comprehensive corpus of Twitter data (@Europarl_EN account) since the EP’s first session on 2 July 2019 until today. It adopts a mixed-method approach which combines qualitative content analysis and the discourse-historical approach to discourse studies, paying due attention to the topical structures of the EP’s self-legitimation discourse as well as its discursive strategies and linguistic devices. As such, the contribution is interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival in nature, as it integrates knowledge from the disciplines of IR, European studies and linguistics.

The European Union (EU) has established a reputation as an environmental pioneer. Many of its policies set targets that are more extensive than elsewhere. Yet, these goals implicitly assume a context of stability in order for them to be achieved. However, since the Eurozone Crisis began in late 2009, the EU has been beset by a series of crises; the ‘polycrisis’ era. We ask: to what extent do EU policymakers feel this polycrisis context has influenced environmental policy?

In response, this article traces the experiences of almost 70 policymakers in Brussels across a twelve-year period, 2010-2022, producing a comprehensive temporal analysis of the discourses behind the policies. This time period holds particular value regarding the design, introduction, and implementation of the European Green Deal. In doing so, we identify the key discursive themes that lie behind policy innovations, while also generating insights into the obstacles to policy creation. We reflect upon these themes in the context of a new cycle of EU policymaking after the European elections in 2024, highlighting points of possible convergence and contention for EU environmental policymaking into the future. The paper thus contributes new knowledge and empirical data for the field, as well as providing relevant new insights for Policy Studies beyond environmental protection.

The paper examines a paradigm shift that is taking place in the EU's Industrial Policy. The context is set by the discussion on the new ways of economic cooperation and the need of the new Washington consensus. We argue that the concepts of «partial de-globalization» and «open strategic autonomy» are becoming key for the EU. The paper focuses on the new EU Industrial Policy, which is shaped by the European Green Deal, on the one hand, and EU’s overall actorness and security concerns, on the other hand. This leads to the security - sustainability dilemma that plays out differently, depending on the counterpart in question. Combining methodological insights from the discourse analysis and case study, we examine the EU external industrial policy towards the U.S., Russia and Turkey, and identify how the EU’s industrial policy is shaped in each of these cases.