The EU has attempted to take a leading role in climate negotiations, but how effective has it been in shaping agreements? Charles F. Parker and Christer Karlsson present survey evidence from eight climate summits leading up to the Paris agreement in 2015. They highlight that although the EU’s perception of itself as a world leader was not shared to the same extent outside of the EU, it was still perceived to be one of the key leaders alongside China and the US

Karlsson, Christer

Parker, Charles F.

LSE Research Online

01/03/2017Assessing the EU’s global climate change leadership: FromCopenhagen to the Paris agreementblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2017/03/01/climate-change-from-copenhagen-to-paris/The EU has attempted to take a leading role in climate negotiations, but how effective has it been inshaping agreements? Charles F. Parker and Christer Karlsson present survey evidence fromeight climate summits leading up to the Paris agreement in 2015. They highlight that although theEU’s perception of itself as a world leader was not shared to the same extent outside of the EU, itwas still perceived to be one of the key leaders alongside China and the US.Enrique Peña Nieto, François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Michelle Bachelet at the COP21Conference in Paris, November 2015. Credits: Presidencia de la República Mexicana (CC BY2.0)On 12 December 2015, at the climate summit in Paris, 196 countries adopted a landmark climate accord, the ParisAgreement. In a recent study, we have examined the role of the EU’s leadership in this outcome. The EU’s attemptsto realise its self-proclaimed bid for climate change leadership were scrutinised by investigating the extent to whichthe EU is actually recognised as a leader by potential followers and to what extent the EU has succeeded inachieving its negotiation objectives. To address these issues we utilised unique survey data collected at eight UNclimate summits from 2008 to 2015 and evaluated the results of the UN climate negotiations particularly with respect1/4to the Union’s goal attainment in Copenhagen and Paris.In the eight years of our survey, the results show that, by a large margin, participants in the climate negotiations sawthe EU, the US and China as the most influential leaders in these talks. However, based on this data we can seethat the EU’s high self-conception of itself as a climate leader is not matched to the same degree by potentialfollowers. The recognition of the EU declined from a height of 62% at the 2008 Poznan summit to 46% at the 2009Copenhagen summit. After the disappointment in Copenhagen, EU diplomatic efforts to get a new negotiationmandate were recognised by the other participants and the EU returned to its status as the most recognised leaderin Durban 2011 (50%), a position it held in 2012 and 2013 also. However, in 2014 at Lima and in 2015 at Paris itwas replaced by the US as the most recognised climate leader.Nonetheless, in every year of our survey the EU has been perceived to be one of the top three most influentialleaders. However, the fact that no leader consistently was able to register over 50% support from potential followers,demonstrates that the world has lacked a single undisputed leader in the field of climate change. This is a situationthat can be described as a fragmented leadership landscape and means the EU must adjust its leadershipstrategies in relation to other powerful actors, such as the US and China.Chart: Percentage of participants in UN climate summits who viewed the EU, China, US, and G-77 as leadersin climate negotiationsNote: For more information, see the authors’ article in the Journal of European IntegrationSix years after the debacle in Copenhagen, in which the EU’s leadership strategies failed to convince the world tosupport a binding treaty for top-down targets and timetables, the EU managed to forge enough of a leadershipalliance with China and the US to achieve a universal deal designed to limit warming to below 2°C in Paris. Anumber of strategic changes by the EU contributed to this outcome. The EU became more flexible and realistic as tohow a deal could be designed, agreeing to an institutional architecture that departed from the strict specified bindingGHG emission reduction targets and timetables it pushed for in Copenhagen to a hybrid arrangement, which couldbe supported by the US and China, that had bottom-up, nationally determined reduction pledges combined with arigorous international review of performance.2/4The EU also played a key role in the adoption of the Paris agreement through its efforts to create and build a HighAmbition Coalition that pressured the major emitting countries to support an ambitious deal with concrete goals anda dynamic review process. This helped the EU to isolate potential veto actors, such as India, and allowed it to helpgather the needed support that led to the approval of the Paris Agreement with a number of provisions that the EUworked hard to include. Namely, it has a stocktaking procedure that will take place every 5 years and a ratchetingmechanism that also requires countries to update their national climate plans to reduce emissions every five yearsas opposed to every 10 years as some countries wanted.While the EU achieved many of its goals in Paris, the agreement has a number of shortcomings from an EU point ofview. Although 185 countries in the run-up to Paris made commitments to reduce their GHGs (Intended NationalContributions or INDCs), the caps on emissions are not binding and even if fully implemented will still result inwarming of at least 2.7°C or more. Text on decarbonisation was removed and no date was given for fossil fuel use topeak and be phased out. Finally, not all of the agreement is legally binding, so future governments of theparticipating countries could try to wriggle out of the deal down the road.Since the deal was struck two big developments have taken place. On the positive side, the Paris Agreemententered into force early on 4 November 2016, one month after 55 countries representing at least 55 per cent ofglobal emissions formally joined the agreement. On the negative side, the 2016 election of Donald Trump means thecontinued participation of the US in the Paris Agreement or the UNFCCC is now uncertain. If the US drops out ofParis and withdraws from climate diplomacy and climate action, the EU will once again have to work hard to help fillthe leadership void this will create and work to build on a constructive leadership alliance with China to helpimplement the agreement.What do our findings mean more broadly for the EU’s ability to exert leadership as a global actor? Although oursurvey results and analysis suggest that while the EU may not be as influential as more structurally significantcountries and while the EU’s positive role perception of itself as a world leader was not shared to the same extentoutside of the EU, we can also demonstrate that the EU is far from the political pygmy some accuse it to be.Collective EU action in global affairs, particularly in the area of climate diplomacy, can be consequential in ways thatcould not be matched by the diplomatic engagement of any individual member state.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article is based on the authors’ recent paper in the Journal of European Integration. It gives the views ofthe authors, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. _________________________________About the authorsCharles F. Parker – Uppsala UniversityCharles F. Parker is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government andserves as a primary investigator in the Center for Natural Disaster Science at Uppsala University.His research has focused on climate change politics, the origins and consequences of the warning-response problem, and post-crisis learning and accountability procedures. His most recentpublications include ‘Social Trust, Impartial Administration and Public Confidence in EU CrisisManagement Institutions’ (with Thomas Persson & Sten Widmalm) in Public Administration , earlyview: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padm.12295/full and ‘Complex Negative Events andthe Diffusion of Crisis: Lessons from the 2010 and 2011 Icelandic Volcanic Ash Cloud Events’, (Geografiska Annaler:Series A, Physical Geography, 97: 1 2015).3/4Christer Karlsson – Uppsala UniversityChrister Karlsson is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, UppsalaUniversity in Sweden. He has published books, articles and book chapters in his principal researchareas: climate change politics, European Union studies, constitutional politics and democratictheory. His work has appeared in journals such as European Law Journal , Global EnvironmentalPolitics, Journal of European Public Policy and Journal of Common Market Studies . He is currentlydoing research on political opposition in EU politics.4/4

Assessing the EU’s global climate change leadership: From Copenhagen to the Paris agreement

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