Greening the European Union for Legitimacy? A Cautionary Reading of Europe 2020

Several scholars have argued that environment policy may provide a way for the EU to legitimize itself while producing genuinely useful public policy. This paper argues that such an aim is laudable, but that the EU is not yet ideationally equipped to tale such a step. The EU's key strategic document for the next decade, Europe 2020, is analyzed from two key “green” perspectives – environmentalism and the more demanding perspective of ecologism – and found wanting in key respects. Consequently the EU will need to rethink its approach to both environment policy and its overall economic and political trajectories if it is meaningfully to “green” itself.