How can the European Union adapt to climate change?

A stronger adaptation governance framework would benefit adaptation efforts.

Publishing date: 28 June 2022
Authors: Klaas Lenaerts Simone Tagliapietra Guntram B. Wolff

Reading time: 1 minute

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Europe must increasingly deal with the harmful impacts of climate change, regardless of its success in reducing emissions. These impacts have significant cross-border effects and threaten to deepen existing divisions. Cooperation on adaptation, which is mostly seen as requiring local or regional efforts, may be useful, but the role of the European Union is ill-defined.

We give an overview of how climate change might change Europe and how it might affect people and the economy. We also discuss what sort of adaptation policies are being pursued at EU level and on what grounds. We argue that a stronger adaptation governance framework would benefit adaptation efforts.

We formulate three ideas to strengthen adaptation. First is a three-layered governance framework based on intensive cooperation to establish binding adaptation plans. Second is an EU-level insurance scheme against damages from climate change, with the size of national contributions tied to the achievement of self-chosen targets in adaptation plans. Our final suggestion is to increase ex-ante adaptation funding by targeting more spending under EU regional and agricultural policies specifically to adaptation in the most vulnerable regions.

About the authors

Klaas Lenaerts

Klaas worked at Bruegel as a Research Analyst until August 2022. He holds a Master in Economics from the KU Leuven and in European Economic Studies from the College of Europe. Additionally, he spent one semester at Uppsala University.

Klaas has a broad background in economics and European affairs. Before joining Bruegel he did a traineeship at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the EU, where he worked on enlargement discussions, and at the European Securities and Markets Authority in Paris, where he contributed mainly to the work of the Risk Analysis and Economics department on such topics as crypto regulation and sustainable finance.

His fields of interest include European climate policy and Eurozone governance, as well as external relations and trade. He is fluent in Dutch and English and advanced in French and German.
Simone Tagliapietra

Simone Tagliapietra is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel. He specialises in EU climate, energy and industrial policy.

He covers the development of domestic and international EU climate policy; the evolution of EU energy markets and policy, especially focusing on the political economy of the Energy Union integration process; and establishing an EU industrial policy marrying decarbonisation with economic competitiveness and security.

He speaks English, Italian and French.

He is also a Part-time Professor at the Florence School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies Europe of The Johns Hopkins University. He is a Member of the Italian Young Academy, a Member of the Board of Directors of the Clean Air Task Force and a Senior Associate of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. He holds a PhD in International Political Economy from the Catholic University of Milan.
Guntram B. Wolff

Guntram Wolff is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel. He specialises in a range of issues, including defence economics, geoeconomics, climate policy and European governance.

He covers topics such as European rearmament and the geoeconomics of trade, finance, climate policy and euro area fiscal policy.

He speaks English, German, and French.

He is a Professor of Economics at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and also a fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Previously, he was the director of Bruegel (2013-22) and the German Council on Foreign Relations (2022-24). He worked on the macroeconomics and governance of the euro area at the European Commission and the research department at the Bundesbank. He also worked as an external adviser to the International Monetary Fund. From 2012-16, he was a member of the French prime minister’s Conseil d’Analyse Economique. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn.

His detailed CV and publications are available at www.guntramwolff.net