EU green deal: between ecological transition and the struggle for power maintenance

Abstract

Environmental, social, humanitarian, and economic crises are part of the contemporary world. The exceeding of Earth's limits manifests in various ways, including climate change, whose effects are already impacting various regions of the planet. Although this issue has been discussed for decades and subject to extensive international legal regulation, there are areas with significant potential for mitigation and adaptation to climate change that remain relatively unexplored. While traditional international trade arrangements are insufficient to promote well-being and the preservation of life on Earth, there is fertile ground for collaboration between international trade and climate change regimes. The European Green Deal, launched as a political project for ecological transition, has economic and trade-related objectives and implications. That stated, the overall objective of this research is to uncover the inconsistencies of the European Green Deal concerning ecological law parameters and its implications for global trade. This is a bibliographical research with descriptive purpose, deductive approach, and axiological interpretation. From the analysis of the European Green Deal based on selected parameters of ecological law, it was found that, although it reflects progress in the implementation of ecological law, the political project serves as a mechanism for maintaining power, reproducing the dominant capitalist logic, which diminishes its own transformative potential in the transition to an ecological paradigm.