ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

The European Automotive Sector Transformation - A Struggle for Standards

Environmental Policy
European Union
Political Leadership
Regulation
International
Negotiation
State Power
Member States
Charles Thiebaud
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Charles Thiebaud
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Abstract

In view of the ongoing climate crisis, the European Union, involving Commission, Parliament and Council keeps pushing for decarbonization. Accordingly, the European automotive sector has become the key industrial field that is subject to policy-driven technological transformations, which operate primarily through the introduction of new industrial and environmental standards. The phasing out of fossil-fuel combustion engines is central in this context. By utilizing the Multiple Streams framework introduced by John W. Kingdon and applying it to the multi-level setting of European industrial policy, the suggested paper explores, how this standardization process in search for industrial transformation is actually organized and implemented? How do policy entrepreneurs operate in the setting of the Commission, and what is the role of key political economies Germany and France in this regard? The underlying hypothesis suggests that policy entrepreneurs struggle over the introduction of new standards to push for the transformation of the European automotive industry, in doing so operating within a policy window that is not only shaped by the particular German and French economic interests, but that is also dependent on the support of national public opinions.