Simon Happersberger

Simon Happersberger is a political scientist focusing on policies and dynamics at the environment-trade nexus. During his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, he examined the European Union’s trade policy instruments with environmental objectives. As a Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies, he situated the EU’s environmental impact assessments of trade agreements in an international comparative perspective. His research was awarded the Oran Young prize of the Earth System Governance network in 2025 and was nominated for the 2025 Best Article Prize of the journal Transnational Environmental Law. He holds an MA from the Freie Universität Berlin and has previously worked at the European Parliament, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Madagascar.  

Chronopolitanism and the Governance of Ecological Exchange 

This project examines the governance of ecological exchange in relations between Turkey and the European Union (EU). Recent research indicates that ecological flows of biophysical resources and pollution or waste are characterized by a reverse asymmetry between different actors. This raises the question of how such asymmetries can be addressed and governed, taking into account considerations of effectiveness, legitimacy, and equity. Given their longstanding relations, the EU and Turkey constitute a most-likely case for effective bilateral governance across diverse policy domains. Nevertheless, their respective engagement on trade and environment still remains understudied. Thus, this project assesses the design of different policy instruments adopted by the EU and Turkey to address the ecological dimensions of bilateral trade flows and the perceptions of these policy instruments among stakeholders in the EU and Turkey. Finally, the project seeks to distill broader lessons and principles that can be derived from the EU-Turkey case for the bilateral governance of ecological exchanges more generally. The expected results are of particular academic and policy relevance in light of the ongoing climate and biodiversity crisis, as well as the contestation of both multilateral globalization and unilateral instruments mitigating environmental consequences.