From Environmental Rhetoric to Environmental Expenditure? Evidence from EU Public Spending (1995-2021)
Adelina-Andreea Siriteanu
What the paper says
Environmental degradation is a global phenomenon that demands coordinated and sustained action at both the micro-and macroeconomic levels.Although international agreements and public expectations exert growing pressure on governments to address environmental challenges, national authorities often fail to translate environmental discourse into tangible fiscal measures.Governments bear both a moral and institutional responsibility to develop coherent environmental strategies that ensure the well-being of future generations.Electoral manifestos serve as key political instruments through which parties communicate their environmental intentions.However, the extent to which these commitments translate into actual public spending remains uncertain.This paper examines the alignment between environmental rhetoric and fiscal behaviour using a panel dataset covering 27 European Union member states from 1995 to 2021.The analysis incorporates ideological, economic, and institutional variables and employs fixed effects regression to control for country-specific characteristics.The results reveal a significant gap between electoral promises and budgetary outcomes, suggesting that many parties engage in symbolic environmentalism.This disconnect underscores the limitations of rhetorical commitments in the absence of structural and economic support for meaningful policy implementation.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.