Distributional choices in EU climate change law and policy: towards a principled approach?

Javier de Cendra de Larragán
Maastricht University
Date of Defence: 4 March 2010
Supervisors:  prof. dr. M.G. Faure, prof. dr. M.G. Peeters

Summary

This research project has analyzed, from the perspective of legal principles, choices made in EU law concerning the distribution of benefits and costs arising from climate change policies. It has examined the potential significance of principles therein, and whether and to what extent they have displayed such potential in EU climate law. While legal principles can provide important guidance in designing and testing distributional choices, and moreover that they have done so in the EU context, important tensions between choices and principles remain. To reduce them, the project has recommended making a number of changes to EU climate change law: review EU policy on biofuels, particularly in relation to imported biofuels; review the approach of the EU to burden sharing between Member States, to ensure that old Member States do not profit from past inactions; clarify potential obligations of Member States towards the EU international mitigation targets under the principle of loyal cooperation; consider whether adaptation costs should also be part of a burden sharing agreement among Member States; monitor closely the interactions that may take place among mitigation measures recently adopted, in order to swiftly correct undesired (distributional) impacts; reconsider the EU approach to burden sharing at international level, in particular the equal per capita approach, and start considering at theoretical level the feasibility of EU-wide personal carbon trading.