Mapping green behavioural public policy in the EU

A just green transition depends not only on how climate policy is designed but also on how people understand, respond to, and act on it. Green behavioural public policy, the application of behavioural science to climate and environmental policymaking, gives governments tools to account for these human responses. This paper maps how far Member States have built capacity to develop and deploy such behaviourally informed policies. It finds substantial disparities across the EU, with a troubling pattern: the countries under the greatest transition pressure are often the least equipped to design the human-centred policies that would ease it. To close this gap, this paper argues that Member States should build behavioural expertise, move beyond one-off interventions towards sustained programmes, and use EU funding instruments to embed this capacity permanently within their institutions.