**Linking Environmental Policy Integration and the Water-Energy-Land-(Food-)Nexus: A Review of the European Union's Energy, Water, and Agricultural Policies**

### **Sandra Venghaus \*, Carolin Märker, Sophia Dieken and Florian Siekmann**

Institute of Energy and Climate Research: Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation (IEK-STE), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Wilhelm-Johnen-Straße, 52428 Jülich, Germany; c.maerker@fz-juelich.de (C.M.); s.dieken@fz-juelich.de (S.D.); f.siekmann@fz-juelich.de (F.S.)

**\*** Correspondence: s.venghaus@fz-juelich.de; Tel.: +49-2461-61-6541

Received: 17 October 2019; Accepted: 21 November 2019; Published: 22 November 2019

**Abstract:** Against the backdrop of climate and environmental pressures, as well as limited resource availability and trade conflicts, devising policies for energy and the use of natural resources in general becomes exceedingly complex. Moreover, policies are required to account for interrelations between individual resources and between di fferent sectors and policy fields, but implementation often lacks. To evaluate the current state of integrated policy design in the EU, a review of European energy, water, and agricultural policies was conducted. Using a qualitative comparative research approach, the objective was to identify and explain the di ffering degrees and variations in policy integration among them. To this aim, the concepts "Environmental Policy Integration" and "Water-Energy-Land Nexus" were jointly applied as analytical frameworks. The analysis revealed that currently, di fferent authorities are endowed with largely sectoral mandates. Accordingly, the respective sectoral policy sets are historically grown based on di ffering sets of formal and informal rules and processes, thus making policy integration among the sectors, let alone within the nexus, a highly challenging task.

**Keywords:** water-energy-land nexus; environmental policy integration; policy analysis; European Union
