The Internal Market & the EU Climate Regime: Interactions and Frictions in the Legal Norm Systems

This PhD thesis investigates the interactions between the European Union’s internal market and the European Union’s climate regime. The purpose of the thesis is to determine if there are any frictions between the two legal norm systems of the internal market and the EU climate regime. The thesis applies the theory of critical legal positivism to investigate the interactions between the two legal norm systems as well as to determine the frictions between them.
Accordingly, the thesis seeks to answer the following research question:
How does the legal norm systems of the internal market and of the EU climate regime interact?
Additionally, three sub-questions are introduced to guide the analysis towards answering the main research question. These three sub-questions are:
I) What are the key principles of the internal market and the EU climate regime?
II) To what extent do the principles of the internal market influence the principles of the EU climate regime?
III) To what extent can the EU climate regime through human rights inform the internal market in the future?
The thesis is divided into four parts: Part I: Purpose, theory & method; Part II: The internal market & the EU climate regime; Part III: The deeper layers of the internal market & the EU climate regime; Part IV: Discussion and conclusion.