Anchoring climate policy integration: progress and limitations under the European Green Deal

This article investigates how and to what extent climate policy integration (CPI) has been legally anchored in the EU’s governance framework under the European Green Deal (EGD). First, we establish an assessment framework that brings the legal anchoring of three dimensions of CPI – strength, sectoral scope and quality – into focus. Second, we assess the progress made in the legal anchoring of CPI in the EU governance framework under the EGD against these criteria. Third, we synthesise the main findings and discuss their wider repercussions. Overall, we identify tangible progress in anchoring CPI in EU governance, especially through the enshrining of the EU’s interim and long-term climate targets in EU law, the introduction of climate-consistency checks under the European Climate Law, and the anchoring of the do-no-significant-harm principle, especially with respect to finance and investment. Remaining shortcomings include a lack of effective implementation and substantive CPI into policy outputs, neglect of the potential for synergy and coherence, and gaps in the sectoral coverage of CPI (including economic governance and agricultural policy). While options for addressing these shortcomings exist, disruptive contemporary politics and mounting climate backlash arguably undermine both the effective implementation of existing CPI rules and their further development.