EU biofuels sustainability standards and certification systems - how to seek WTO-compatibility

Biofuels are increasingly being produced and consumed as a partial substitute to fossil-fuel based transport fuels in the fight against climate change. Sustainability criteria have been introduced recently by some countries to help ensure biofuels perform better than fossil fuels environmentally. Concerns have been expressed from various quarters that such criteria could represent World Trade Organisation (WTO)-incompatible barriers to trade. The present paper addresses two specific issues. First, it argues that biofuels can be expected to be treated like any other traded product under WTO law. Thus an importing country could not impose different trade measures dependent on whether the biofuel complied with its sustainability criteria. Second, the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBTA) provides guidance on how to draw up criteria to help ensure WTO compatibility. This cannot guarantee compatibility, but it can help reduce significantly the chances of WTO Members bringing actions against a fellow Member’s biofuels sustainability criteria. There is little direct case law to draw upon but it is argued that, if the TBT guidance is followed, in the long term the absence of case law can be taken as an indication that the sustainability criteria established are WTO-compatible

EU rural development policy in the new member states: promoting multifunctionality?

European Union (EU) enlargement has seen ten new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries

Is the multiple streams framework useful for analysing transnational policy dynamics? The case of EU biofuels policy implementation

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has, since 1984, enabled policy scholars to analyse policymaking under conditions of complexity, ambiguity and contingency. Subsequent developments have helped extend its scope beyond the US political system and take its applicability in policy analysis beyond agenda-setting. In the present paper we seek to develop the MSF further by adding a scalar dimension. Specifically, we wish to explore the prospects for an adapted MSF to contribute to the analysis of transnational policy processes, emerging as a result of globalisation. In open economy policy-making, we posit that domestic policy streams require coupling with transnational problem and politics streams. It also necessitates a step away from overly-geological metaphors, and strict temporally-sequenced policy processes. Furthermore, emergent transnational policy implementation is based on transnational governance networks rather than on traditional governmental hierarchies, creating new roles for state and nonstate actors that the MSF can help apprehend. We apply our revised MSF framework to the creation and implementation of EU biofuels environmental sustainability criteria. Against this adapted MSF backdrop, we argue that the EU itself played the role of policy entrepreneur, building a governance network through the successful coupling of multiple streams across traditional borders of state authority

When is policy failure? The dynamics of biofuels policies in the EU and US

This paper uses EU and US biofuels policies to interrogate certain issues relating to the concept of policy failure. It utilises recent work classifying policy success, policy failure, and the space in between to explore how we might understand these ideas better in the context of policies designed to run over a set period of time, but which are designed to address problems which are long-term and ongoing – specifically energy security and climate change. A specific policy with specific targets defined over a specified time-period may be judged as success or failure. But insofar as any particular policy, under these circumstances, is intended first and foremost to be taking markets and market outcomes in a specific direction, the judgement of policy success or failure may need to be subordinated to considerations of how policy-makers are able to steer policy, putting it back on track if it veers off, accepting a slower speed of travel if initial targets are overly-ambitious. This ability to reflect on policy and to learn from experience may ultimately be crucial to defining the success or failure of ‘policy’, over and above judgements made about ‘this particular policy’

Challenges in extra-territorial policy and business implementation: EU biofuels policy

Globalisation is changing how public policies are made and implemented. A substantial literature argues that governance, increasingly, requires active engagement between governments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and international organisations. Less well researched are the challenges faced when public policy by government requires extra-territorial implementation by a network of trans-territorial and extra-territorial actors. In this paper, we address this lacuna through an analysis of the implementation of EU biofuels policy. This reveals that the governance of such a network offers actors new roles and opportunities. It thus sheds light on how the divide between the public and private, and between private actors’ market and non-market strategies, are breaking down

Historical-institutionalist perspectives on the development of the EU budget system

The EU budget has only recently started to feature in theories of European integration. Studies typically adopt a historical-institutionalist framework, exploring notions such as path dependency. They have, however, generally been rather aggregated, or coarse-grained, in their approach. The EU budget has thus been treated as a single entity rather than a series of inter-linked institutions. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by adopting a fine-grained approach. This enables us to emphasize the connections that exist between EU budgetary institutions, in both time and space. We show that the initial set of budgetary institutions was unable, over time, to achieve consistently their treaty-based objectives. In response, rather than reform these institutions at potentially high political cost, additional institutions were layered on top of the extant structures. We thus demonstrate how some EU budgetary institutions have remained unchanged, whilst others have been added or changed over time