Could Cohesion Policy push EU climate efforts?

The main purpose of this article is to evaluate the extent to which the Cohesion Policy of the EU contributes to its climate change mitigation effort. While climate change mitigation and the EU Cohesion Policy have been both thoroughly studied theoretically, the novelty of the present article lies in an analysis of their mutual relationship. Also, a unique feature of this research is an analysis of the contribution of the Cohesion Policy to climate change mitigation over a period of 20 years, including a comparison of the three last programming periods (2000–2006, 2007–2013 and 2014–2020). The results of this research suggest that, while the beginning of the new millennium saw the Cohesion Policy neglecting the issue of climate change mitigation, the current programming period (2014–2020) placed it among its key priorities. This conclusion is supported by a comprehensive set of data on five selected indicators. This article also displays the results against the perspective of the overall climate change mitigation objectives of the EU. POLICY RELEVANCE The present article shows how a policy, which used to be considered rather distant from climate change, progressively adopted climate change mitigation as one of its principal objectives. As such, it provides a practical guidance on the integration of climate change mitigation in other policy areas, which may be applied not only in a supranational organisation but also on a national, regional or local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]