The Changing Role of the European Union in International Environmental Politics: Institution Building and the Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

In the last twenty-five years the European Union (EU) has gradually developed an international, albeit ambiguous, identity that has greatly enhanced its leadership role in the international environmental arena. The leadership offered by the EU has been largely shaped by its unique institutional structure, but also by such factors as the changing nature of international environmental issues. In this essay we contrast the traditional role of the United States with that of the EU in global climate change negotiations and comment on the future role of both actors in the international environmental arena. An understanding of the institutional structures of the EU and the changing nature of international environmental issues helps to explain the EU's ascendant role as a leader in multilateral environmental politics. p

Globalizing European Union environmental policy

“…EU leadership is not simply the result of laggard behaviour by the US or other states. Certainly, the US shift from global environmental leader in the 1970s and 1980s to laggard and obstructionist in the 1990s and 2000s opened an opportunity for the EU to assert leadership (Kelemen and Vogel, forthcoming;Sbragia and Damro 1999), but the retreat of the US did not force the EU to take on the active leadership role that it has.…”

Building the EU’s Energy Policy Agenda: Insights Gained

“…In fact, the EU has been one of the jurisdictions pushing for the establishment of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Schreurs and Tiberghien 2007, p. 19). In light of this achievement, a large but still growing body of literature attributes a leadership role to the EU in global climate change politics (Sbragia and Damro 1999;Gupta and Ringius 2001;Vogler 2005;Vogler and Stephan 2007;Biesbroek et al 2010). The EU's leadership in climate change can be traced back to the role of a few individual member states, namely: Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Schreurs and Tiberghien 2007, p. 19).…”

The European Union in International Politics: Acting as a Global Civilian Power (GCP)

“…Certainly, the US shift from global environmental leader in the 1970s and 1980s to laggard and obstructionist in the 1990s and 2000s opened an opportunity for the EU to assert its leadership (Sbragia and Damro, 1999). The EU has played the most visible role within the negotiations of the Kyoto protocol while the US completely rejected to ratify such an agreement.…”