about us

We are three young students of Maastricht University who share an interest in the European Union’s regulatory governance on environmental issues. Our shared values when it comes to climate protection led us to establish this blog. Regulatory governance, through the employ of different policies, regulations, and laws, plays an essential role in shaping the world’s development. We decided to look at regulatory governance’s role in bringing forward environmental and sustainable development. What can it do to help us create a more green world? What has it done this far?  Our goal is to inform as well as to raise awareness about these problems and show how contemporary key actors in regulatory governance are dealing with them and how efficient they have been.

We focused our analysis on the European Union’s regulatory governance, since, as European Studies’ students, we have particular knowledge and interest in it. Besides this very obvious reason, it is also extremely relevant to address this topic in relation to the EU, as the latter is the supranational organization that has been the most involved in the fight against climate change and has achieved relatively significant successes. Obviously, climate change and pollution are not issues that can be dealt with by the European Union, as they are in no way only a European problem, but rather a global one. However, the EU has had a role in setting environmental standards across the world, making its role even more prominent in the field, and we will be addressing this as well in our posts.

Each one of us has a different idea on where the EU should focus its attention so we decided to look at three different themes. The blog will, therefore, inform about the efficiency of the measures of the EU and will touch upon some of the most important issues in the field of environmental regulations, such as reducing CO2 emissions, regulating plastic pollution, and protecting marine life. Our reasons for choosing these three areas are simple. They all fall within crucial fields in environmental regulations, and they are all connected in a way. The increasing emissions of CO2 caused by human activity are contributing to the greenhouse effect which is leading to increasing temperatures in the whole globe. Furthermore, plastic pollution, as well as being a serious threat to our health and our lands, also causes an increase in the level of greenhouse emissions, contributing to climate change. Plus, it negatively affects marine life and biodiversity. Besides, the protection of marine life is critical to discuss because of the importance of fisheries in the EU. Given the relevance of our topics, the posts will hopefully give some useful insights to our readers. We also wish to spark discussions and debate, so do not hesitate to leave a comment, be that a positive or negative one. Have a good read!

OUR EDITORS

Katrin Buronzo

k.buronzo@stundet.maastrichtuniveristy.nl

Second-year student of European Studies at Maastricht University. She is 20 years old and half Italian and half German, and grew up in Turin, Italy, where she also attended a European Highschool. Her school provided her with the opportunity to communicate with people from all around Europe, which piqued her curiosity in the European Union. Her main interest is in how it operates, how the Union is organized, and how it attempts to address today’s most pressing concerns, such as climate change, immigration, and the problematic relationship between China and the United States. As a result, she is interested on how the EU’s regulatory governance, with its rules, attempts to address global challenges such as climate change. Her primary focus is thus on the examination of European regulatory governance on plastic pollution.

Axel van der weijden

axel_weijden@hotmail.com

Axel is a Second year European Studies student, who has a particular interest in both international relations as well as climate change. Especially how these two interests intersect. Like the other writers of this blog Axel has an aspect of climate change that he focuses on. This means that his blog posts will be about marine protection and fisheries. You can expect his blog post to focus on the effectiveness of marine protection and how EU policy in this area can set examples and inspire change in other countries. Especially those not in the European union. Other writers will look at the effects of EU policy with their member states.

Chiara Montanaro

chiamontanaro@gmail.com

Second year student of European Studies at Maastricht University. Given the objective of the blog, and having explored in the course of her studies how the European Union regulatory governance works, she will focus her analysis on the specific regulations that the European Union has put into force to reduce CO2 emissions. She will examine the efficiency of such measures and their significance in global environmental regulations. 

Who posted which post?

Chiara Montanaro posted “Is the EU ETS effective?“

Katrin Buronzo posted “Eu norms on plastic pollution”

Axel van der weijden posted “Marine life protection”