The European Green Deal: Procedural Supranationalism Drives European Integration

Only 11 days in office, the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, outlined details about a European Green Deal (EGD). This initiative is said to become a cornerstone of her presidency, shaping most areas of Commission activity through an ambitious legislative agenda. It promotes more sustainable policies by mainstreaming climate in other fields, setting ambitious climate targets and upscaling green finance schemes. Depth and scope of this supranational entrepreneurship are somewhat surprising. Only recently, crises in the EU have vividly demonstrated the limits of supranational integration and heralded a resurgence of intergovernmental policy-making.

This paper argues that the European Green Deal illustrates a new development in European integration that could be conceptualized as procedural supranationalization. Seeking to cope with crises whilst acknowledging intergovernmental deadlock in the EU, the Commission pursues a procedural rather than legal expansion of competences to gain new governing authority. Three elements underpin this approach. Firstly, Commission entrepreneurship focuses on linking policy areas already under supranational competence instead of communitarizing new areas. Secondly, impact is generated through internal bureaucratic reconfiguration rather than implementing a new governance structure. Finally, the new initiative gains legitimacy by linking its content to the outcomes of the European election. Taken together, the Commission’s new supranationalism is an approach that accommodates the constraints set by intergovernmental policy-making in the post-Maastricht era and could thereby become a role-model for European integration in the 21st century.