Crisis, climate change and comitology : policy dismantling via the backdoor?

The European Union (EU) is reputed to be a climate pioneer. However, the EU has been beset by crises, with potentially negative consequences for climate ambition. Analysis and coding of EU climate legislation between 1998 and 2015 reveal that while the rate of climate policy creation has increased since the onset of the crisis, the ambition of these policies has waned. Technical policy instruments (comitology) at the EU level – ‘Delegated and Implementing Acts’ (DIA) – are analysed alongside legislation adopted under the ‘Ordinary Legislative Procedure’ (OLP). If applied as indicated in the treaties, technical DIA measures should not influence policy ambition, but in fact during the crisis era, DIA measures were used more frequently, and used in three out of the four cases of policy weakening, suggesting that minor dismantling of climate policy is taking place at EU level, but via the backdoor.