Coordination between diverse policy actors leads to the emergence of coalitions and helps address complex environmental problems by incorporating varying perspectives and resources, generating policy change. Hence, coalitions can facilitate policy progress by aggregating policy actors’ preferences and simplifying the overall process. This same variance, however, can also spurn conflicts, blocking policy progress. To date, research on coalitions in EU (environmental) policymaking primarily identifies coalitions, either within EU institutions or in an ad-hoc manner and at a given moment in the policymaking process, to explain policy outcomes and change. Interestingly, these identified coalitions structurally differ along multiple dimensions, for example, by membership, resources, and coordination density. Yet, no systematic mapping or characterization has been conducted across the policymaking process to take stock of this variation. Doing so is necessary to start developing explanations for coalitions, which is currently sparse, and deepen our understandings of EU environmental policymaking processes. Consequently, this paper asks: what types of coalitions emerge in EU environmental policymaking processes? Scholars show that different structures of coalitions have varying consequences on the outcome of a policy process. Studying what different coalitions emerge, we can begin to infer whether and when policy progress or conflict may arise and the appetite and extent for policy change.

Focusing on five diverse cases (the European Climate Law, the Batteries Regulation, Renewable Energy Directive, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the Just Transition Fund) this paper aims to first, systematically map and identify varying coalitions across the agenda-setting, policy formulation, and decision-making stages, through social network analysis. Then, coalitions will be characterized along a set of dimensions derived from the literature. To do so, semi-structured interviews and public documents, including specialized press reports, EU documents, and position papers are relied on.

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in radical left parties (RLPs) and their environmental positions. This so-called greening of RLPs incorporates democratic-socialist stances and environmentalism and strives for drastic measures to protect the climate, which are sometimes at odds with the functioning of the existing regime. This conflict is particularly visible in the European Union (EU), since many RLPs embrace Eurosceptic attitudes. Hence, this paper examines the role of RLPs in the European Parliament (EP) to better understand how their positions on European integration and greening have evolved over time. It focuses on the tensions arising from their Eurosceptic and radical policy positions in an environment marked by consensus and the need to adopt pragmatic and constructive attitudes. It is argued that the increasing salience of environmental issues to the RLPs has rendered their Members of the European Parliament more co-operative in the law-making process, including forming alliances with the other progressive party groups. Hence, in order to be effective in the area of environmental policies, RLPs have had to reduce their rejectionist attitude towards the EU. Based on elite interviews with both RLPs and mainstream groups, this paper aims to better understand how RLPs perceive their work in the EP in relation to environmental issues but also how mainstream parties make sense of the RLPs’ apparent shift in environmental positions and Euroscepticism.

Among the multiple challenges facing the European Union, achieving climate neutrality, the macro-objective at the heart of the European Green Deal (EGD), undoubtedly represents one of the most complex. Far from being exclusively a technical goal, climate neutrality advocated by the Union has a substantially political character and implies a process of transformation of the EU legal and societal order. By its long-term vision, ambitions, latitude, and regulatory depth, the EGD is likely to have a profound and lasting impact on the EU and its administrative system. Against this backdrop, the article aims to shed light on some of the legal, political, and institutional dynamics that characterise the Union’s energy and ecological transition process, the challenges and opportunities it presents for the EU and its Member States, and the complex issues it raises for the European regulatory space. In particular, after discussing the rationale behind the EU governance system for climate neutrality and the main regulatory techniques on which it is based, the role that citizens and science are called upon to play in the challenge of climate neutrality is addressed. Admittedly, the overall success and legitimacy of the EGD largely depend on its ability to integrate and balance the contribution of scientific knowledge (‘rule by the experts’) and that of civil society (‘rule by the people’) in the regulatory process, so as to give voice to the plurality of legitimate pespectives. Like any transition process, however, this one is also marked by tensions and contradictions, setbacks and steps forward, certainties and ambiguities.

Under President Ursula von der Leyen's direction, the European Commission started an ambitious 2019 journey to address urgent environmental concerns and put the EU on a sustainable path. The European Green Deal - which seemed to be the most expansive and ambitious integrated program of reform, investment, and research ever imagined by the European Union- an expansive and revolutionary program designed to achieve carbon neutrality, promote economic growth, and improve the welfare of EU citizens, was at the center of this endeavor. This research explores the subject from the perspective and tools of social science. Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, examining the numbers and targets set in the Green Deal, and by relying on in-depth interviews with policy makers, this paper analyzes the emergence of sustainability as an objective and its implementation in European Union policy. In light of the growing concerns about the environment and the pressing need to slown down global warming, the paper thoroughly examines the plans, programs, and tactics that the European Commission has implemented, seeking to offer an in-depth analysis of whether the European Green Deal has fulfilled its promises and whether the objectives set forth in 2019 have been accomplished.

András Varga - listed as sub-author - is my supervisor.