The EU's Green Dynamism: Deadlock and Change in Energy and Environmental Policy [Paperback]

This book makes a timely and fresh contribution to the study of EU environmental policy. It provides new theoretical and empirical insights on the factors constraining and driving the policy innovation and progress. A highly interesting read for students of EU environmental policy and EU policy-making in general.Often, but not always, the EU is able to forge green policies beyond the preferences of the least ambitious. This book not only provides new insight into the mechanisms for bypassing joint-decision traps, it is also noteworthy for its skillful analysis of the conditions for variance in progress across novel areas of energy efficiency. Recommended reading!Amidst a Union struggling with multiple crises, this book shows why the EU fares much better than nation states in meeting the biggest challenge yet: environmental degradation. Detailed case studies on energy efficiency allow Deters to discover different mechanisms that overcome the joint-decision trap. His carefully researched and insightful analysis of how compromise can build on diverse national preferences is most timely.This book offers a novel twist on the well-known claim that the EU has to escape a series of internal political traps that are ever present. By drawing on careful process tracing analyses of three little studied energy efficiency laws, Deters reveals how actors work together to achieve this and in so doing, opens up a fascinating new research agenda covering the revision of existing policies.By comparing cases of stability and change, including CO2-limits for passenger cars and the phase-out of incandescent lamps, the book examines the ways in and out of the JDT in environmental policy.The high voting threshold in the Council together with conflicting national preferences should frustrate effective European problem-solving. This famous prediction of the joint-decision trap (JDT) is at odds with Europe's dynamic environmental policy. Yet there is scarce research on the limited impact oflƒ¸