Europe in a climate of risk: three paradigms at play

Abstract of Working Paper 23

We explore the suitability of risk regulation, and particularly the EU approach to risk regulation, as a conceptual and organisational framework for the EU's battle against climate change.

We argue that such exploration, in the first place, requires a thorough understanding of the discourses, agenda and strategies that constitute, respectively, the risk regulation paradigm, the EU risk regulation paradigm and the climate risk paradigm.

The analysis of the three paradigms reveals points of overlap but also substantial divergences, with the most pronounced tensions occurring between the EU risk regulation and climate risk paradigms.

Our paper therefore reinforces concerns over a possible colonisation of climate change policy by EU risk regulation and argues that climate change regulation has a better chance of effectiveness if it develops alongside but separately from EU risk regulation ('coexistence').

The latter scenario also offers prospects for comparison and exchange between regulatory regimes ('cross-regime learning'), which could help both regimes to face, and possibly overcome, their specific weaknesses.

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