Free Markets à la Carte: Infrastructural Power in the European Green Deal

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

This hybrid seminar takes place in Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia and online on Zoom.

Join Timur Ergen and Luuk Schmitz for a discussion on free markets and the structural problem European Union's green energy initiatives present.

How are market-making institutions repurposed for state intervention? This seminar will discuss a paper that argues that the EU’s green new deal is a result of ongoing mismatches between the European Union’s state capacities and policy requirements. In the field of green energy initiatives, Keyensian-sized ambitions are perforce implemented with downsized interventionist capabilities. Building on the literature on mismatches between capacities and mandated tasks in 21st century central banking, Timur Ergen and Luuk Schmitz argue that the EU's green energy initiatives are characterised by a similar structural problem. Being reliant on private industry's investment decisions to create room for regulatory maneuver in the climate field, the EU resorts to market-oriented policy repertoires. Authors develop their argument based on an account of the EU’s recent attempts to repurpose cohesion funds for green ends. Reconstructing the Union’s well-documented problems to expand regulatory constraints on emissions through the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), they show how policymakers have resorted to large-scale underwriting and incentive schemes to manipulate investment flows and ‘bribe’ markets into low-emitting pathways.