Lessons Learned from the Implementation of European Environmental Policy Models Under the Eu's 2020 Climate and Energy Package

This paper will compare two models of environmental policy implementation which coexist in the EU. The models will be extracted from two (formerly) EU Member States in whose case both their differences and their similarities make them the right candidates for this research, the United Kingdom and Romania. Sitting on opposite sides of the continent, and possibly precisely for this reason, the two countries differ substantially in one aspect that will be at the core of this research: what role is assigned to the state and what role is assigned to the market in each of the two environmental policy models. The research will thus add to existing political economy literature on market failure and governmental failure in designing and implementing environmental policy. The theoretical framework will begin with the “spectrum” of state involvement (for delivering social outcomes such as environmental protection) described by Cameron Hepburn in Environmental policy, government and the market. Hepburn states that the spectrum ranges from “free market” to “nationalized delivery”, with seven intermediate stages of state intervention. Though neither is Britain at the “free market” extreme, nor is Romania at the “nationalised delivery” end, they both show a historical bias for these respective directions. In other words, for a range of reasons to be considered in this research, Britain has encouraged markets to play a significantly larger role than Romania has. In Romania’s case, both privatisations and liberalisation have been implemented only partially, meaning that it provides the perfect counterbalance to Britain’s market model.