There has been a growing attention to emissions trading to reduce carbon emissions domestically because emissions trading is seen as an efficient policy measure, which offers business sectors cost-effective options to tackle carbon reduction.
Now we can find a trend toward emission trading at several levels from regional to national and sub-national levels.
However, each emissions trading has different levels of regulation.
Focusing on two cases: the EU and Japan, this article explores what makes differences to the different level of regulation in each emissions trading system.
The EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS) is more mandatory because of the additional costs it could cause to business sectors.
The Directorate-General (DG) Environment of the European Commission took the initiative to adopt a “cap and trade” system at EU level based on absolute limits on carbon emissions from each installation.
This case symbolizes the EU's leadership in climate policy area.
On the contrary, Japanese emissions trading systems are more voluntary because of the design based on voluntary actions by business sectors.
The
Ministry of Environment could have never taken the initiative to introduce stricter emissions trading because of the opposition from business interests.
The case in Japan corresponds to the conventional view that business interests have more political influence than environmental interests.
While in the literature of environmental politics the role of environmentally motivated actors (e.g. environmental groups, governmental ministries, political parties, epistemic communities and so on) has been emphasized in explaining the different level of regulation in environmental policy measures, this article focuses more on the attitude of business interests toward climate policies.
If business interests are more open to environmental norms, environmental policy measures would be more regulative, and vice versa.
What determines the attitude of business interests as a whole toward climate policies? Though both in the EU and Japan cross-sectoral peak associations represent business interests in policy processes, we can find two types of peak association.
One is “corporate associations” representing the voices of member industries and companies.
The other is “executive associations”, the member of which is corporate executives as an individual.
They do not necessarily represent the voices of industries and companies.
Because of this difference in organizational structure, executive associations can be more open to longer-term interests including environmental norms than corporate associations can.
From this inference this article argues as follows: because the executive association has more presence than the corporate association, the EU has been enthusiastically committed to climate policies and introduced relatively strict emissions trading system.
On the contrary, in Japan because the corporate association has more presence than the executive association climate policies have been placed as secondary and emissions trading systems remain to be more voluntary.

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Borders play important roles in the so-called Westphalian system where sovereign-nation states divide global space and co-exist. Borders determine to what geographical extent the political power, economic regulations, language and social relations influence on the people and activities. Concurrently, when national borders are established, a modern capitalist market economy becomes the dominant economic system. The capitalist system was developed under the sovereign state system because each state needed to develop its own economy mainly through mercantilist policies. Thus, for a long time, borders functioned as a political, legal and economic barrier to the outside world.
However, globalization changed the concept of border. Increasing transaction of money, goods, migration and information seem to undermine the function of borders. However, this article argues that this massive cross-border transaction happens because of the separation of political, legal and economic spheres. Money, goods and people move because they seek preferential exchange rates, interest rates, wages and purchasing power. These differences stem from differences in political, legal and economic systems, and it can only be possible if borders divide a geographical sphere. In other words, “borderless” or cross-border activities happen only in a “borderful” world. This article addresses the case of European integration and scrutinizes the role and meaning of borders in Europe, where market integration is more advanced, but still there are various national systems have remained to control the market.
In this analysis of political economy of borders, it employs two different analytical concepts of borders. The first is the ontological border: the physical existence at the edge of a geographical territory. The second is the institutional border: legal and conceptual borders that do not necessarily require physical existence, such as cyber space control or extraterritorial taxation.
Although the role and meaning of border has changed due to globalization, it only happened at the ontological border, and the institutional border remains unchanged. Even in the EU, states maintain a certain level of control because they are responsible for internal affairs (particularly security and employment) and refuse outside intervention. There is a clear distinction between ontological and institutional borders: the integration of Europe certainly transformed the nature of borders from physical barriers to a geographical line, but EU member states maintain their legal and political jurisdiction to use institutional borders for protecting their society. These findings suggest that it is necessary to distinguish the concept of border by its functions, and researchers need to take into account changes in the roles and meanings of border.

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In this article, it is argued that, according to requests by EU private banks, the Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) abolished guarantees for public banks in EU Member States.

The EU financial integration was developed in the 1980s single market program, however, there were loopholes in the financial integration. For example, aid to public banks was rarely questioned in the 1980s single market program. Therefore, EU Member States were able to protect domestic public banks by giving guarantees. In the 2000s the guarantees were abolished by the DG COMP. However, little attention was paid to the role of EU private banks at the time of the abolishment.

At the end of 1991, the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia decided to transfer the Housing Promotion Institute (WFA) to WestLB for a consideration of 0.6 per annum. In 1994, a complaint was lodged against the transfer by the Federal Association of German Banks. German private banks took the view that the low price paid constituted state aid that distorted competition. This started a dispute over the guarantees for public banks in Germany. On 21 December 1999, the European Banking Federation (EBF) filed a complaint against Anstaltslast and Gewährträgerhaftung, the two guarantee instruments traditionally used in the German public banks. According to the EBF’s request, the DG COMP has requested the German authorities to bring State guarantees for public banks into line with the State aid rules of the EC Treaty. At first, German authorities and public banks resisted against the DG COMP’s request, but soon after agreed on the request. These were followed by the abolishment of similar guarantees in Austria and France.

Therefore, according to the request by EU private banks, the DG COMP abolished the guarantees for public banks in EU Member States.

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