The EU's Global Climate Leadership

The EU has substantively changed its negotiation strategy in the global climate regime after the failure to reach an agreement at COP-15 in 2009. The move towards a more bottom-up approach takes more seriously the concerns of other actors, including states in the Global South. This change has reinvigorated the EU’s role on the international level and was instrumental for reaching the Paris Agreement. However, it also led to a weaker agreement in substance, relying on member states’ willingness to implement policies to meet an ambitious target. In this flash brief, GLOBUS researchers Franziskus von Lucke and Thomas Diez present the main dilemmas and make some recommendations for the EU's climate policy going forward.