The paper examines the implications held by the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic for the green transition as set by the European Green Deal. The analysis shows the EU Energy Union governance framework was promoting the EU’s climate targets’ full integration into the EU’s energy transition policy instruments even before the European Green Deal. Still, the EU’s response to the Covid-19 crisis created strong financial and policy leverage to accelerate the green transition and gave an opportunity to close the gap between less ambitious and more ambitious EU countries. Many countries traditionally reliant on EU funds seized this opportunity, demonstrating the role of changed governance principles (the second order of change). However, the crisis has had an evolutionary impact, not a revolutionary one. While coherence between the energy and climate goals remains high, the EU’s energy transition is falling short in fully integrating biodiversity (which would constitute a full paradigmatic, third-order change), despite this being an essential component of the EU’s green transition.
It is a result of the ‘Norm transfer in the EU and Slovenia – evaluating environmental and sustainability transformation’ project (supported by the Slovenian Research Agency; project code: J5-2562).
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