Between the lines : a policy analysis of the European Green Deal and its portrayal of rural areas

Sammanfattning: This thesis takes its starting point in the European Green Deal – the European Union’s new strategy towards a climate neutral union by 2050. It includes the overarching aim to combat climate change and environmental degradation, and will affect the major parts of EU’s political agenda for the upcoming decades. In terms of being a policy aiming for combatting climate change and support further economic growth, it constitutes a framework and a foundation that will define and direct the political work towards national, regional and local management levels throughout the entire EU for a long time to come. With this in mind, this thesis is aiming for an understanding of policy problems in the European Green Deal: how they are presented and what presuppositions that underlines statements and measures. In order to investigate how different geographical areas are mentioned in the policy initiative, an additional aim of the thesis is to investigate how rural areas are mentioned and described in relation to different aims and objectives. Based on a policy analysis combined with analysis of language, the press release of the European Green Deal reflects a discourse where climate and environmental measures are based and dependent on economic growth, while there also is a distinction made between rural and urban environments in terms of aims and functions. This becomes clear in the light of how urban contexts to a larger extent are associated and mentioned with explicit objectives and formulations, while rural areas thru implicit problem representations are described as a natural resource in need for adaption in order to contribute to a green transition. The analysis also shows how the European Green Deal correspond to older policy perspectives presented by the European Commission, which in turn creates a foundation for questioning formulations that emphasizes the European Green Deal as something new. Instead, the policy strategy can be linked to policy perspective based on ecological modernization theory, which is reflected by how measures and objectives are constructed in order to combine growth, social development and climate measures.