Introduction

This chapter looks back across the broader historical context (Chapter 3) and the five sub-areas of mitigation and adaptation policy (Chapters 4–8), and reviews how and why policy in the EU has evolved as it has. More specifically, it describes what kinds of policies have been adopted and examines the choices that most informed their design. The next section returns to the six broad phases of policy development that were originally introduced in Chapter 3. It summarises these phases and briefly relates them to some of the main findings of Chapters 4–8. The third section explores which governance dilemmas were provoked by the choices that emerged in these six phases, and examines how they were confronted and by whom, in relation to the formal and informal features of the EU introduced in Chapter 2. After that, it views these patterns from the perspective of the two main theoretical approaches originally outlined in Chapter 2. Finally, this chapter draws conclusions and makes links to the next part of the book (Chapters 10 and 11), which looks forward to climate policy beyond 2020.

The evolution of climate policy in the EU

The six main phases of policy development

In the phase up to 1988, climate change was mainly discussed in scientific rather than policy circles. The Commission eagerly responded to the Toronto conference in 1988, publishing a Communication (COM (88) 656) which, although it did not offer any firm recommendations, still marked the commencement of formal policy making in the EU.