Re-Evaluating The Origins Of The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme: The Europeanisation Of Emissions Trading

Abstract

The adoption of carbon market trading in the European Union (EU) was far from assured. Prior
to the Kyoto Protocol, the EU had been critical of market trading and had expressed grave
reservations regarding its potential contribution to climate governance. Given this historical
backdrop, the EU’s conversion to market trading and subsequent vocal championing of the merits of
this regulatory approach, is particularly intriguing. Whilst emissions trading gradually garnered
support within the EU, institutionally the Union remained trapped by the normative objections,
which it had initially articulated against the idea. Such norm entrapment – the inability to pursue a
preferred policy that violates a norm because of prior rhetorical affirmation of the norm – presented a
particular dilemma for the EU.
Paradoxically, the contribution of individual norm entrepreneurs, located within the
Commission, in reframing emissions trading as an effective and efficient instrument for climate
governance in the EU proved considerable to unlocking this entrapment dilemma. As a result, a
concept, which the EU had previously delegitimised as evasive of domestic responsibilities, was
instead reconstructed as a legitimate strategy to salvage the Kyoto Protocol. As market trading
internationalises, understanding the drivers and processes by which the EU ETS came to occupy the
cornerstone of EU climate policy may offer valuable insights to policy-makers and stakeholders
endeavouring to promote global emissions trading initiatives.