Cornerstones of EU Positions in International Climate Negotiations

From the outset, three central features of EU action in the international climate change re-gime can be identified. First, the EU has always put a strong focus on a multilateral approach.

Thus, its preference has always been to develop comprehensive and universal agreements within the UN regime. Second, the EU has continually favoured a regulatory approach, aiming for clear-cut objectives, such as defined and binding emission reduction targets. Third, in or-der to induce action in the international climate change regime, the EU pursued a role model strategy, assuming that other actors would follow suit if the EU pushed forward with ambi-tious emission reduction targets. While the regulatory approach, in principle, is still an EU priority, the Union adapted its strategies later and became more flexible. This increased flex-ibility was crucial in order to account for matters of political feasflex-ibility. The Climate Summit in 2009 had blatantly failed and the EU saw itself sidelined on the international stage. COP-15, therefore became a turning point after which the EU changed its diplomatic strategy, while not completely abandoning its initial preferences. This causes an intriguing tension which I will discuss in more detail below, when analysing the EU’s contribution to solidarisation in the climate change regime. In the first instance, the following paragraph shall serve to give a

brief summary of particular negotiation positions that the EU has been putting forward in the course of the international climate change regime’s development. For more detailed accounts of this, see for instance Schunz (2012, 2015).

Already in the run-up phase to the Rio Summit in 1992, where the UNFCCC was finalised and adopted, the EU put forward its objective of including clear targets into the convention.

The EU’s preference was to stipulate in the agreement the stabilisation of Greenhouse Gas Emission (GHGE) on 1990 levels by the year 2000 (Bäckstrand and Elgström 2013, 1375; Ober-thür 2011, 669; OberOber-thür and Pallemaerts 2010a, 29). The formulation of such a clear target was mainly opposed by the United States. The agreed document ultimately represents a com-promise between US and EU positions. Rather than setting a clear-cut target, the convention, instead, only uses very broad language to determine in a non-binding manner that parties to the agreement should strive for the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentration in the at-mosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the cli-mate system” (United Nations 1992, Art. 2). The EU, thus, had failed (facing primarily oppo-sition from the United States) to include such clear objectives in the UNFCCC. Nevertheless, the more general stabilisation goal, even if formulated in a non-binding manner, still has been the baseline for further cooperation on the issue (Oberthür 2011, 669). Moreover, there were two other issues on which the EU defended a particular position in the UNFCCC negotiations:

on the ‘Common but differentiated responsibilities’-principle (CBDR) and the precautionary principle.

As regards the latter, it was the EU (back then EC) delegation that suggested and ultimately successfully implemented principle 15 of the Rio declaration, which reads: “Where there are threats of serious and irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective action”. This principle indicates that the absence of scientific consensus about the harmfulness of particular actions shall not be used to legitimise non-action on the matter. This was particularly crucial to the climate change regime at a time, when scientific evidence for the anthropogenic causes of global warming was well underway, but not yet fully accepted. And it remains important until today. The precautionary principle turns the logic of the need for action upside down by transferring the burden of proof to those who purport that GHGE might not cause global warming and detrimental effects. As long as there is no clear evidence that global warming is not harmful, there is a responsibility to com-bat climate change. This principle is still crucial for the global climate change regime and has

also become part of general EU law (Art. 191 (2) TFEU). I will come back to the precautionary principle and its relevance for processes of solidarisation below.

As for the CBDR, the EU took a more sceptical stance. While the EU has always been in favour of differentiation within the climate change regime (Interview 2017b), it feared that the CBDR would rather lead to a problematic bifurcation of the regime than to an adequate, helpful and eventually just differentiation. After all, the EU had to accept the incorporation of the CBDR into the convention (Art. 3 UNFCCC), in order to safeguard its completion. But it did so reluctantly (Bäckstrand and Elgström 2013, 1675). As is known, the EU was quite right in anticipating a problematic bifurcation of the regime, which has later also contributed to the regime’s deadlock and ineffectiveness. Again, I will return to the implications of the CBDR for solidarisation later when I discuss the EU’s contribution to processes of solidarisa-tion.

For the next milestone of the global climate change regime, the EU’s positions had not tre-mendously changed: During the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, the EU continued to promote a top-down or regulatory approach, to wit clear and legally binding targets without flexibility on the actual commitments that states make by signing the protocol. In the negoti-ation phase, the US was reluctant to follow such an approach, but then followed the EU’s lead (Bodansky 2013, 40). On the other hand, the EU did not support the idea of flexible mecha-nisms, such as international emission trading, which the US promoted emphatically. Ulti-mately, the EU agreed in order to keep the US on board. As is known, this strategy worked initially, but ultimately could not prevent the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol under President Bush jr. in the early 2000s. Furthermore, somewhat ironically, the EU was later the one to develop the first fully-fledged emission trading scheme (ETS) (Wurzel and Connelly 2011, 8), which became a cornerstone of its internal climate change policies as well as a model to other actors (see section 6.1.3 for further details).

After the adoption of the Kyoto protocol in 1998 the focus turned immediately to an effec-tive implementation of the new treaty. In this phase, the EU’s role was crucial. While the US withdrawal from the Protocol in 2001 put the whole process in serious jeopardy, it at the same provided an opportunity for the EU to finally assume a leadership role in order to fill the void that had emerged. Rescuing the Kyoto Protocol in spite of missing US support, therefore be-came its major mission, which it accomplished for instance by ensuring Russia’s ratification in exchange for support for its WTO candidacy (Bäckstrand and Elgström 2013, 1376; Zim-mermann 2007). The EU’s effort and overall political activity in convincing other actors to

ratify the protocol was paramount (Vogler and Bretherton 2006; Falkner et al. 2010) to secure the Kyoto Protocol’s survival.

With the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, post-Kyoto negotiations started promptly. The international community had planned to proceed with the negotiations in a way that would have allowed to adopt a new comprehensive and binding agreement at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen (Bodansky 2013, 43; Falkner et al. 2010, 256; Schunz 2012, 17–18). As is known, COP-15 eventually turned out as a tremendous failure and three years before the expiration of Kyoto’s first commitment period a follow-up agreement did not seem within reach. Instead of a new binding agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, largely drafted by the United States and the BASIC countries (Falkner et al. 2010, 257) is hardly more than the least common denominator, on which the rather non-reformist, non-progressive ac-tors had left their clear mark. The EU with its preference for a binding treaty with clear com-mitments of all countries for climate change mitigation, was not reflected whatsoever in the outcome document. Hence, most observers and commentators consider the 2009 summit in general and the EU’s performance in that context as failure (ibid., 252). Bodansky (2013, 42), in contrast, asserts that “the Copenhagen meeting was far from the flop often portrayed”.

While COP-15 certainly was unable to fulfil the high expectations that had been raised for this meeting, he argues that it still constitutes an important step in the development of the climate change regime. It introduced a crucial change in the regime which paved the way for the agreement reached in Paris in 2015. COP-15 was a huge disappointment for those who had expected a major breakthrough for Copenhagen, but nonetheless “it did not cause the international process to collapse altogether” (Falkner et al. 2010, 253). Instead of the regula-tory, top-down logic of clear targets, the Copenhagen Accord introduced the bottom-up ar-chitecture of voluntary pledges, which was part and parcel of the breakthrough reached in Paris. Falkner is certainly correct when he points out that the Paris Agreement acknowledges the dominance of states in climate change politics and, as a consequence, the fact that it is not possible to simply force states in a top-down logic to reduce GHG. His assessment of the Paris Summit outcome therefore is that it entails “a reassertion of a pluralist logic of decentralised coordination that protects national sovereignty” (Falkner 2018, 40). While his argument can-not be fully dismissed, I will argue later in this chapter that the reproduction of pluralist structures depicts only half of the Paris Agreement’s story. It likewise entails solidarising moves, which I will demonstrate below (see section 6.3.6). At this point, the aim is a more basic one, namely to describe the positions that the EU has put forward in the shift that the development from Kyoto via Copenhagen towards Paris entails.

A considerable part of the blame for the Copenhagen failure is often put on the Danish Presidency of the Summit. Yet, beyond that the EU’s strategy in pursuing its objectives was flawed. Two interrelated aspects are worth mentioning: Until COP-15, the EU continued pro-moting clear targets and based its strategy mainly on the assumption that its own ambitious normative agenda combined with efforts at persuasion would bring others to follow suit.

Moreover, the EU seemed to ignore the fact that power structures had tremendously changed and that newly emerging powers would have the capacities to successfully promote their own, much less reformist agenda (Hurrell and Sengupta 2012). In such circumstances, marked by highly dispersed power structures, leading by example turned out to be extremely difficult (Wurzel and Connelly 2011, 9). Hence, rather than relying on the normative persuasiveness of its own position, the EU would have had to put much more effort in coalition-building and the active organisation of outreach to other actors (Bäckstrand and Elgström 2013; Oberthür and Groen 2017a; Biedenkopf 2016; Schunz 2012, 2015).

It seems that the learning effect from Copenhagen for EU diplomacy could not have been greater: In the aftermath of COP-15 and the run-up phase to the Paris Summit, the EU clearly changed both these aspects. It became more flexible on its principled normative approach and it enhanced its engagement in systematic coalition-building and external outreach.

Regarding its strategy in the aftermath of Copenhagen and the run-up to Paris, the EU changed its diplomatic strategy and improved its efforts on coalition-building and outreach to third actors significantly (Bergamaschi et al.; Biedenkopf 2016; Davis Cross 2017; Kaczynski 2014; Oberthür 2016; Oberthür and Groen 2017a; Oberthür and Wyns 2014).

In a nutshell, the following points summarise neatly, the major positions that the EU has (at times successfully) promoted in the global climate change regime from UNFCCC to Paris:

- Focusing the work towards an agreement on multilateralism and thus on the UN framework instead of other fora.

- Striving for a comprehensive and binding treaty that commits all countries to GHGE reduction.

- Stipulating clear-cut emission reduction targets (the EU became more flexible in the immediate run-up phase to Paris).

- Establishing rules and review mechanisms that help ensure transparency and poten-tially foster the effectivity of the agreements.

- Overcoming the dichotomisation of the climate change regime between developed and developing states by repelling the CBDR or at least an all too state-centric inter-pretation of it.

- As regards the diplomatic strategy, the EU initially focused on a leading-by-example approach reckoning that the EU’s own normative vanguardism would allow others to follow this model. When this strategy had turned out to be ineffective, the EU directed its diplomatic activity much more on effective coalition-building as well as early and effective outreach to third actors.