The EU: towards adequate, coherent and coordinated climate action?

Abstract

This chapter takes stock of what we have learned from the contributions gathered in this Handbook and reflects on the EU’s ability to deliver on increasingly ambitious climate policy objectives. After summarizing key messages of each chapter, the chapter brings out a number of cross-cutting themes, related to key on-going challenges facing effective EU climate policy. These include the need to raise and appropriately direct significant new finance, the need for democratic but also decisive decision making, the power of ‘incumbents’, the adequacy of relying on technological fixes for emission reduction, and the geopolitical dimension. We end with an assessment of the prospects for EU climate policy and politics as the 2020s develop, in particular the extent to which crises can be managed to allow a continued or even enhanced focus on climate change. We highlight growing impacts from extreme events as one on-going crisis that will need a more concerted response.