We are pleased to announce that on 20 December 2023, Jana Gheuens successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Policymaking for the Future: Evidence from EU Climate Governance”.
Jana’s PhD promoters were Prof. dr. Sebastian Oberthür, Director of the Research Centre for Environment, Economy, and Energy, and Professor for Environment and Sustainable Development at the Brussels School of Governance, and Dr. Didier Caluwaerts, Associate Professor of Democratic Governance at the VUB. Members of her jury were Prof. dr. Didier Caluwaerts, Prof. dr. Karen Celis, Prof. dr. Claire Dupont, Prof. dr. Charlotte Burns, and Prof. dr. Jamal Shahin, who also acted as a Chair.
The Brussels School of Governance would like to congratulate Dr. Gheuens on this wonderful achievement. Below you can read more about her PhD thesis.
Abstract
Despite the EU’s portrayal as a climate leader, its climate legislation is considered to be insufficient to adequately limit climate change. To explain why policymakers are not able to formulate adequate answers to these long-term challenges, scholars often point towards the presence of an inherent bias towards the short term. However, little is known about how shortsighted EU climate legislation has been, and what could have contributed to it.
To address this gap, the PhD seeks to assess the level of shortsightedness of EU climate policy, and mechanisms of shortsightedness that could have influenced it. To do so, the PhD develops a framework to assess shortsightedness based on four indicators: (1) the long-term sufficiency of the objectives; (2) the stringency; and (3) adaptability of the legislation; and (4) the presence of long-term thinking. This framework is used to investigate the shortsightedness of the economy-wide 2020 and 2030 climate and energy packages and the European Climate Law and Fit for 55 Package, the positions of the European Commission, European Parliament, and Council of the EU on them, and the sectoral 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2023 Regulations for the CO2 emission performance standards of new passenger cars. To examine what contributed to the identified levels of shortsightedness, the PhD focuses on two of its mechanisms in the EU institutions: (1) appointment procedures; and (2) openness to interest groups. The analysis is based on a qualitative content-analysis of a variety of sources including semi-structured interviews with EU policymakers, legislative documents, peer-reviewed articles, and media reports.
The PhD shows that the shortsightedness of EU climate legislation has varied over time, across policy areas, and between EU institutions. In doing so, it challenges the notion of shortsightedness as an inherent feature of political systems. Different appointment procedures and openness to interest groups have contributed to the identified variation between policy areas and EU institutions. However, changing shortsightedness of electoral and to a lesser extent interest group concerns could have influenced variation over time. As a result, the PhD provides insights on shortsightedness and its presence at the EU level, and the challenges and opportunities of long-term decision-making in the EU.
