Accepted Paper
Paper short abstract
Using process tracing to analyse official documents, parliamentary records, and stakeholder submissions between 2019 and 2024, this paper maps the policy linkages and identifies the agents driving the rise of the EU green economic statecraft.
Paper long abstract
Recent scholarship characterizes the 2019 European Union´s Green Deal as the pillar of an emerging "green superpower" projecting influence through climate leadership. Yet this characterization emphasizes normative leadership and market size while leaving underspecified the policy instruments through which the EU constructs structural dependencies. Building on Thurbon et al.'s concept of "green energy statecraft" (2024) - the strategic deployment of state capacity to shape clean energy transitions - this paper extends the framework from East Asian developmental states to a supranational regulatory polity, and broadens the analysis beyond energy to examine coordination across regulatory, industrial, and resource security instruments.
The EU coordinates environmental regulations, industrial policies, and partnership frameworks to build structural economic interdependence with trade partners. This paper asks whether this coordination constitutes green economic statecraft: the deliberate linking of standard-setting, industrial positioning, and supply chain control for geoeconomic purposes. Analysis of three components of the EU's green regulatory-industrial complex—the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA), and Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)—examines how these instruments relate to one another. CBAM creates demand for decarbonized production, NZIA positions European firms to supply clean technologies, and CRMA secures the material inputs both require. Using process tracing to analyse official documents, parliamentary records, and stakeholder submissions between 2019 and 2024, this paper maps the policy linkages and identifies the agents driving the rise of the EU green economic statecraft.
Keywords: Green Economic Statecraft; European Union; Carbon Border Adjustment; Net-Zero Industry Act; Critical Raw Materials; Developmental Environmentalism
G(local) political economy of green transition: Actors, institutions, and power shifts