Conference Agenda

One of the key ways of analysing the EU’s green agenda is to focus on the evolving institutional features of the current policy itself. Scholars discuss the degree of ambition in the face of the planetary challenges of our time and assess the complexities of negotiation and policy-making at EU level. There is attention to the impact of various domestic and external variables, reflecting geopolitical, economic and populist dynamics. Nonetheless, what needs further investigation is the quality of implementation of the EU environmental acquis in predicting the trajectories of green change in Europe. While there is a growing consensus that the green agenda requires a holistic approach, which transcends the boundaries of policy sectors and resonates with every aspect of life, this observation does not translate into understanding the complexities of environmental reform within EU Member States.

This paper scrutinises the strength of the adaptational pressures and change in compliance with European rules and practices by revisiting the ‘goodness of fit’ concept utilised in the Europeanization literature (Risse, Cowles and Caporaso, 2001: 7). In its heyday this concept helped problematise EU-driven reform in member states with attention to the dynamics between the EU policy and domestic structures. Despite some of its critiques, the concept can be reutilised with greater attention to the impact of domestic factors.

The paper applies this framework to unpack the patterns of change in green domestic reform by investigating how the quality of domestic performance has evolved with the change of EU policy. In particular, it investigates whether poor performance in 1990s environmental reform is a predictor for implementing the Green Deal policy given the shifts in adaptation pressure and in domestic contexts. How do states who were laggards move along the green ladder? In doing so we take the case of the 1990s EU waste policies and its implications for transition to circular economy paradigms. Would states lagging behind in compliance with more environmentally suboptimal policies, like the ones on landfills, be performing better with respect to the EU circular economy provisions? And if not, why? Who are the gatekeepers of the green reform?