Max Gruenig

Adjunct Faculty @Georgetown University Walsh School Of Foreign Service

DC, US

Teaching European environmental policy at the BMW Center for German and European Studies.The curriculum focuses on legislative initiatives in the European Green Deal.Since the early 1970s, the European Community has made environmental legislation and regulation central to its mission, establishing environmental policy as fundamental to modern-day Europe’s identity. The consequences of Brussels’s commitment to an increasingly active environmental agenda are felt both among the bloc’s Member States and across the globe. Initially, the aim of European environmental policy focused on the immediate present: remediating clear and present dangers such as brownfields; improving human health through air and water quality standards; and ensuring the safe manufacture, use, and disposal of chemicals. Today, however, the European Union’s approach is future-oriented, aiming to establish framework conditions that expand and extend these efforts for generations to come. This new thinking manifests itself in climate policy, biodiversity protection, and the push for a circular economy. At the heart of this new policy approach is the European Green Deal, a portfolio of intersecting policies spanning a wide range of environmental concerns that was introduced in 2019. Beginning with the foundations of EU environmental policymaking and a brief survey of milestones of environmental progress, this course looks critically at the seven stages of the EU environmental policy process using the core elements of the European Green Deal as the primary objects of study.

Humboldt University of Berlin

Master’s Degree