Pawel’s research focuses on international dimensions of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) – a CO₂ trading scheme – and specifically the move by the EU to include international aviation within this scheme. This extension of the EU ETS can be viewed as unilateral step of the European Union (EU) to regulate a global issue, which sets a new path for environmental governance, bypassing international organisations responsible hitherto for aviation regulation. Important questions therefore arise about the nature of this policy change, how it came about, and the arguments it has generated in policy-making processes on both sides of the Atlantic.

The aim of this research is to analyse the policy-making processes surrounding the process of including aviation in the EU ETS, both within Europe itself, and in the international responses coming from the US and organisations such as International Air Transport Association (IATA) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The research asks what are the differences surrounding aviation pollution policy in the EU and US and how can those be understood in a broader context of multi-level governance?