In a few weeks, the Commission will come forward with their hallmark initiative ‘the European Green Deal’.
It will be the central legislative, policy and political issue for the next five years.
What is obvious, if not yet openly discussed, is that if the Green Deal is to mean anything, it’s going to involve massive structural changes to Europe’s economy and way of life. If it is just a slogan, it means little.
Daniel Kahneman Lessons for Public Policy
Daniel Kahneman was interviewed on Farham Street ‘Putting Your Intuition on Ice’ (link). When the discussion got to ‘loss aversion’ , there is something that the architects of the Green Deal should take note of:
“Where this goes into policy and governments and really important things, the governments are like agents or people who think about the good of society. And agents, they take the economic view. They take the view of what things would be like at the end. They don’t figure out that there are some people who are going to be losing because of the reform that they’ll make, and it turns out that you can really expect losers, potential losers, to fight a lot harder than potential winners. That’s the reason that reforms so frequently fail, and that when they succeed, they’re almost always way more expensive than anticipated. They’re more expensive because you have to compensate the losers, and that frequently is not anticipated.”
If the new Commission underplay the aversion for loss, it is likely that their ambitious agenda will be stalled from the start.
Sectoral Councils do not have the green zeal of the Commission or the European Council. It’s hard to see the Transport or the Agriculture Council backing a kerosene tax for aviation or introducing tighter emissions on livestock farmers.
Every year, the Fisheries Council develops amnesia and ignores the laws of nature and science, and backs overfishing and quotas that ignore scientific advice. Now, they are ignoring Sustainable Development Goals and WTO talks and calling for the re-introduction of subsidies to build new fishing vessels.
If there are too many far-reaching reforms rolled out at the same time, with little deep thinking and objective evidence to back the policy choices put forward, the reform agenda could grind to a halt. Ministers and MEPs , backed by many interests, will talk the proposals out.
The Commission can’t expect the European Council to take control of all files.
If the new Commission don’t take on board Daniel Kahneman’s idea fast, they’ll hit the political wall hard fast.