In the latest issue of EU-funded FEMISE « Med Change Makers » video interviews, Vera Danilina (Aix-Marseille University, FEMISE) focuses on environmental taxation and green public procurement (GPP).

She provides a comparative analysis of their effectiveness and reveals the opportunities for harmonized environmental policy between countries.

“In general, environmental regulation is not well-developed in the South-Med countries,” she points out. “[..] At the same time we observe the development of environmental policies that indicates the growing understanding of their importance”, she adds.

Moreover, she warns that “without developing green policy, the South Med countries risk to deepen not only the ecological problems but also the social and economic difficulties.”

Her results suggest specific implications for environmental collaboration between EU countries and those of the MENA region. “The EU is known for its well-developed system of environmental regulation that can be seen as one of the examples to spread to the South-Med countries. [..]Since 2008 the European Commission has developed more than 20 common GPP criteria covering a wide range of sectors,” she explains.

Finally, she recommends to South Med officials the wide implementation of GPP as an efficient approach to environmental policy design, and a long-term environmental policy harmonisation even across countries with different level of economic and institutional capacity.

FEMISE launched its series of interviews called « Med Change Makers » in 2018. They are text and video-based interviews that allow dynamic researchers of the FEMISE network to illustrate how their research addresses a policy-relevant question and how it contributes to the policy-making process in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

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Interview of Vera Danilina : Text version and video