Emissions trading as an instrument of EU climate policy: a critical analysis of control processes in sociological perspective

The study deals with the control procedures in the policy field of the EU climate policy. Initially established hypothesis regarding the efficiency of the EU's climate strategy (H1) and the democratic legitimacy of the policy (H2) were developed on the basis of various theoretical concepts of society, power, action, structure, system and control and analysed with regards to the actors, power structures and interactions involved. Here, the result shows that the EU's democratic legitimacy is questioned and that no equal community exists. In the conclusion, the authors confirm the hypothesis, that the control processes in an effort to regulate the emissions are classified as sufficient from a sociological perspective, as the clearly structured instrument forms a functioning unit.