Is the European Commission an engine for climate policy expansions in the EU? : A study of intergovernmental and supranational influences in European emissions trading

Abstract

Over the last decade the European Commission has started up a process, ending with a considerably expanded area of its competences related to the governance of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). These changes will become fully visible from 2013 through ETS 3. Meanwhile, before this important change to the scheme, smaller adjustments has been made also for the second period of trading with emissions allowances (ETS 2). Here the Commission has harmonised the model for setting the overall cap-level of emissions for the member states. This started up centralisation process, that finally commenced in the harmonised ETS 3, has contributed to considerably higher levels of vertical integration in EU emissions trading. In this thesis I investigate how this process towards the Commission competence expansion best can be understood.

Applying the intergovernmental perspective, I find that the member states were able to uphold a decentralised approach over the setup phase, ETS 1. There were mixed opinions over the introduction of emissions trading in Europe. Once the system had been set into force the Commission was important in providing with credible committements for the states. It was requested that changes would happen to make ETS 2 and 3 more successful, and the Commission responded to this by expanding its field of competences. The Commission has over the period studied moved within an overall member state supervision and consent in expanding its tasks. New institutionalism give grounds for partly conflicting, partly complementing results. The analysis in light of the institutional perspective shows that the Commission has behaved as a policy entrepreneur throughout the period studied. It was planned at an early stage how the scheme would over time be more centralised, and in accomplishing this the internal Commission institutional capacities and feedback mechanism has been important. In fact, the institutional workings of the Commission has been decisive for that ETS from 2013 will be reinforced as the solely European measure it was meant to be from the beginning.