Legal complexity undermines effective climate policy implementation

Effective climate policy depends not only on ambitious targets, but also on how laws are concretely designed. In a new article published in Climate Policy, Steffen Hurka and Yves Steinebach (University of Oslo) examine whether the increasing complexity of climate legislation undermines its practical implementation.

Over time, climate laws in the European Union have become longer, more detailed, and more interconnected. This complexity may reflect political compromises or technical requirements. At the same time, however, it can make rules harder to understand, administer, and enforce. To analyze these challenges systematically, the authors developed an index to measure legal complexity. The index captures structural features (such as length and level of detail), linguistic characteristics, and the interconnectedness of individual articles and legal acts. The researchers then examined how different levels of complexity affect implementation performance across EU member states.

The results reveal a clear pattern: the more complex a climate law, the less effective its implementation tends to be. While strong administrative capacity generally improves implementation performance, it cannot fully offset the negative effects of excessive complexity. The study’s central conclusion is therefore that ambitious climate goals require not only political will, but also carefully designed and workable legislation. Overly complex rules may unintentionally hinder the implementation of climate policy.