The invasion of Ukraine has upended EU energy security and intensified commitments to green transition. European governments and the EU collectively have come to frame ecological transition as a matter of immediate security self-interest. Alongside the main dynamics of securitization and re-bordering, Europe's reshaped order also gives a more prominent place to the green transition – not merely as a stand-alone area of environmental policy but as integral to the continent's politics and geostrategy. It appears that the commitment to energy transition is to be a core pillar of the emerging geoliberal European order.

And yet, for all the intense activity in this area of climate action, the relationship between environmental policies and the postwar European order remains hazy. Governments have not fully followed through on their commitments to green transition. Energy policy is an area where national-interest calculations remain powerful and displace a common pattern of re-ordering. The international environmental spill-over from the Ukraine war has been handmaiden to a more Europe-first, sovereigntist approach to energy and climate interests that raises questions about rules-based green order. While European powers have upgraded their climate and ecological commitments, it is unclear whether these are far-reaching enough to involve structural re-ordering. European governments have taken steps since early 2022 to intensify their climate policies but still need to develop comprehensive green re-ordering.

GREEN TRIGGER

The war in Ukraine has had a dramatic impact on European climate action and ecological policies. It has injected new momentum behind the transition to a low carbon economy and other environmental objectives. The war is not the major factor driving climate action, of course, but it has pushed European governments and the EU institutions into a new era of green politics. The war has allowed EU institutions and governments to frame the green agenda as a more obvious necessity for strategic self-benefit. It has unblocked green commitments and accelerated many elements of energy transition. It opens the prospect of a green European order – that is, a situation in which ecological policy is integral to the way that postwar order is organized. Yet, the jury is still out on whether this green momentum is strong enough to reshape the basic parameters of European order in the same way that post-1945 reconstruction drove the founding of a new European project.