Identifying capacity shortages preventing a successful EU environmental policy

Do the member states of the European Union (EU) have the capacities required to live up to the EU´s climate and environmental goals? What capacities do they lack, and what can be done about it? These are the questions that this project aims to answer.

As the EU´s environmental policy goals have become ever more ambitious, the fact that the member states often fail to implement these policies has become an increasingly alarming problem. For the implementation of environmental policy, different forms of capacity problems are a key problem.

But the existing research has conceptualized “capacity problems” in very different ways, ranging from a lack of financial resources, bureaucratic efficiency, to central government authority.

This lack of distinction has become a problem for practitioners and policy makers seeking to address capacity shortages, as different types of problems demand different solutions.

In this project, we will use a bottom-up approach, and start with identified instances of failure to implement environmental policy in the EU member states. We will then determine what the specific causes of the failure was, including distinct capacity problems.

Next, we analyze how different forms of capacity problems affect each other, and how they vary across different member states.

Importantly, by distinguishing between different kinds of capacity problems, we will be able to match them with practical solutions, and improve environmental policy implementation effectiveness.