La stratégie environnementale de l'Union européenne

Environmental policy is an art of execution. Hence the fact that European Union member states have recently managed to agree on targets of emissions to fight climate change leaves open the question of how they will meet them. Economics can not but embrace the scientific consensus on climate change and can not say much about the efficiency of alternative technologies. Yet, its expertise is valuable to calculate economic effects and fairness of policies and to assess the relevance of incentives structures and effectiveness of institutions put into place to convert scientific consensus into action. This article is concerned with this latter point: does the EU have the right institutions to fight climate change? We claim that such is not the case, and offer to institute a « European Community of Environment, Energy and Research » to go forward. JEL Classification: F59, O52, Q48, Q54, Q58.