Pierre Bocquillon

An elephant on the 13th floor of the Berlaymont? European Council and Commission relations in legislative agenda setting

ABSTRACT With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council has become an official institution of the European Union (EU). According to the Treaty, it should provide the Union with ‘impetus’ and ‘general political directions and priorities’. The explicit exclusion of any legislative functions seems to demarcate its role clearly from that of the European Commission, which retains the formal monopoly over legislative initiative. However, Treaty provisions have not prevented the European Council and its President from informally setting the agenda in a detailed way, often creating tension with the Commission. By looking into three high profile cases – the energy climate package, economic governance reform and Schengen reform – through the prism of two theoretical approaches – the principal agent model and ‘joint agenda setting’ approach – this article explores patterns of interactions between the two institutions in legislative agenda setting and shows that the relationship can be best defined in terms of ‘competitive cooperation’.

The more the merrier? Assessing the impact of enlargement on EU performance in energy and climate change policies

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of enlargement on European Union performance in energy and climate change policies. It looks at process-driven performance, focusing on agenda-setting, negotiation dynamics and institutional change – as well as outcome-driven performance, looking at the ambitiousness of policy objectives and their implementation. The empirical analysis is based on qualitative, comparative case studies of EU climate change and energy security policies. The article shows that enlargement has had a nuanced but contrasted impact on the two areas. It also points to the recent assertiveness of Central and Eastern European Countries in both energy security and climate policy.

Contributions of Public Policies to Greening Sugarcane Ethanol Production in Brazil

The development of a green economy is key to achieve sustainable development. Investing in greening the energy sector contributes to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions while helping to develop a more resilient economy. Public policies have a role in driving the biofuel sector towards a more sustainable path, reducing its environmental footprint and enhancing its economic, environmental and social benefits. The aim of this study is to analyse how public policies can contribute to greening the ethanol sector in Brazil. To accomplish this objective, a review of the economic characteristics of the Brazilian ethanol sector was conducted, based on official documents and reports, policies and on scientific studies. Then, a review of Brazilian public policies was conduced to analyse how public polices influence the sustainable production of the Brazilian ethanol sector. Brazilian bioenergy policies have contributed to establish a green biofuel sector, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing the efficiency in sugarcane production, creating jobs and improving air quality in cities.

The European Council and European Governance: The Commanding Heights of the EU

presidency of the Council. The author makes a very convincing, and extremely interesting, demonstration of the widespread occurrence of departure from formal rules within the EU. The Commission often endorses government proposals rather than preparing its own, member states rarely use voting roles, negotiations over legislation occur behind closed door before the proposal is even submitted by the Commission and government regularly narrow the Commission’s discretion in implementation. Moreover, as expected, the presidency of the Council is often called as an honest broker when domestic interests are at stake. As the author also anticipates, agriculture stands apart in that the use of formal rules prevails in this policy area. However, the explanation Kleine provides – that farmers’ pressure is easier to forestall and thus to manage within the formal institutional framework – fails to convince me. Why would predictable conflicts be easier to handle with formal rules than unexpected ones? Also, there are many alternative explanations for why agriculture distinguishes itself: it is one of the oldest policies of the EU and represents a large part of the EU budget (the largest for decades); it is a policy field for which the EU has exclusive competences, and one of the few that combines consultation by the EP and qualified majority (rather than unanimity) voting. It is also an area for which a decision is often necessarily taken – i.e. the status quo is seldom an option (think for example about the setting of the price of milk). All these reasons must have empowered the Commission vis-à-vis the member states and have thus made it better able to force governments to comply with the formal rules when these are to its advantage. In the book, I see no attempt to disprove this alternative explanation, and this is why I hesitate to accept the author’s argument about the central role of uncertainty in the choice of formal over informal rules. As a matter of fact, I see many instances for which the institutionalist bargaining theory – which understands the development of informal rules as a result of a bargaining process between competence-maximising supranational actors – could successfully have explained the use of formal or informal rules. I am also unsure about the usefulness of the definition of formal rules as those under which actors act as in ‘equilibria’, i.e. rules that describe a situation in which no actor would want to change his/her behaviour in interaction with others. This creates some confusion for me, and I do not understand why such an ambiguous definition is superior to the one that defines formal rules as those which are written and have legal effect, with informal rules being those that deviate from this. All in all, however, this book is an extremely interesting piece of research. It is very well written, and in a way that both experts and people without previous knowledge of the EU can read – which is good to see. I have learned a lot by reading this book, as will my students of EU institutions who will have to read it for my class from now on.

Ten‐year assessment of the 100 priority questions for global biodiversity conservation

In 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the worlds biodiversity. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high-priority questions in the peer-reviewed literature. We took a first step toward reexamining the 100 questions to identify key knowledge gaps that remain. Through a combination of a questionnaire and a literature review, we evaluated each question on the basis of 2 criteria: relevance and effort. We defined highly relevant questions as those that - if answered - would have the greatest impact on global biodiversity conservation and quantified effort based on the number of review publications addressing a particular question, which we used as a proxy for research effort. Using this approach, we identified a set of questions that, despite being perceived as highly relevant, have been the focus of relatively few review publications over the past 10 years. These questions covered a broad range of topics but predominantly tackled 3 major themes: conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems, role of societal structures in shaping interactions between people and the environment, and impacts of conservation interventions. We believe these questions represent important knowledge gaps that have received insufficient attention and may need to be prioritized in future research.

European energy policy: an environmental approach

head of two major commissions over the next decade, Barbara was able to influence progressive change in the British criminal justice system—the inadequacies of which she knew only too well through her decades of service as a magistrate—towards her vision of a more rational, utilitarian and less moralizing approach, as expressed in her most famous book, Social science and social pathology (1959). The two ‘Wootton Reports’ respectively recommended more lenient sentencing for cannabis possession and the introduction of community service orders as an alternative to prison. From her vantage point in the upper chamber, Barbara also helped to steer through the abolition of capital punishment. What strikes the modern reader most about Barbara Wootton is her apparently unshakeable belief in the power of reason, scientific research and public policy to contribute to her goal of a more equal, just and happier society—methods and values that have come under considerable attack in the last few decades. A case in point is the 2001 Labour government’s rebranding of Barbara’s beloved ‘community service orders’ as ‘community punishment orders’, exemplifying the punitive attitude towards criminal justice she had tried to steer the country away from. Perhaps in doing so she was naı̈ve, or even elitist, in denying popular impulses to punish the wicked. Yet, like another great mind of her generation, John Maynard Keynes (with whom she shared a nanny), Barbara Wootton was an elitist in the best sense of that word—determined to use her lofty position and great talents for the betterment of society as a whole.