Search results

AbstractSince the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom (UK) government has been keen to persuade commentators and stakeholders that Brexit will not be bad for the UK's environment. Rather in line with the role of Britain as a great power, the government has suggested that when it comes to the environment the UK can be a global superpower, leading other nations in its pursuit of ambitious environmental policy goals. This new environmental foreign policy role orientation has been articulated through the concept of 'Green Brexit' and showcased via the chairing of a major Climate Change Conference (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties (COP) 26) in Glasgow in 2021. However, whilst there was a flurry of policy activity around COP26, overall 'Green Brexit', has yet to be underpinned by coherent and credible domestic policy commitments necessary for effective international environmental leadership.

Britain's approach to environmental policy fundamentally changed because of its membership in the European Union.

Britain's approach to environmental policy fundamentally changed because of its membership in the European Union.

EU biotechnology policy is locked into a sub-optimal path, with a fractured regulatory system and limited release of new crops onto the market. An historical institutionalist analysis of this policy area reveals insights into how this state of affairs came to pass and allows predictions about the sector's future development. The case study also provides insights into how and why policies become locked into certain paths, thereby contributing to further understanding of how history can matter. In this instance it is suggested that a relatively small decision early on in the policy's development was more important than a subsequent exogenous shock. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article makes a two-fold contribution to the European Parliament (EP) literature. First, it challenges the dominant assumption that post-Amsterdam the EP has experienced an increase in its powers. Through analysis of the Socrates case the article shows that the EP is now potentially weaker under the post-Amsterdam co-decision procedure (co-decision II), than it was under the earlier variant, co-decision I. Second, the article uncovers a hitherto overlooked aspect of internal divisions within the parliament, by revealing that there is scope for inter-committee conflict in the EP over budgetary allocations for multi-annual programmes. It is argued that such conflict can weaken the parliament in co-decision negotiations with the council, and that the negotiation of the EU's new multi-annual budgetary framework provides the perfect conditions for such internecine conflict to occur once more.