Assessing the European Union’s global climate change leadership: from Copenhagen to the Paris Agreement

Abstract

This contribution examines the role European Union (EU) leadership played in the outcome of the 2015 COP21 climate summit in Paris. The EU’s attempts to realise its bid for climate change leadership are scrutinised by investigating to what extent the EU is actually recognised as a leader by potential followers and to what extent the EU has succeeded in achieving its negotiation objectives. To address these issues we utilize survey data collected at eight UN climate summits from 2008 to 2015 and evaluate the results of the climate negotiations particularly with respect to the Union’s goal attainment in Copenhagen and Paris. Our findings, which reveal a fragmented leadership landscape in which the EU must adjust its leadership strategies in relation to other powerful actors, such as the United States and China, provide insights into leadership theory and the EU’s prospects for exerting influence as an external actor on the world stage.

Keywords:

• Climate change negotiations
• Copenhagen summit
• COP 21 Paris summit
• European Union (EU)
• leadership
• Paris Agreement

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude for the helpful anonymous reviewer feedback and to Ingeborg Tömmel, Amy Verdun, and the participants of the workshop at the University of Osnabrück on Political Leadership in the EU for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this contribution. We would like to thank the members of the International Negotiations Survey team (www.internationalnegotiationssurvey.se) at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research (CSPR) for distributing surveys at the UN climate summits, COPs 14-21, as well as to the COP delegates who participated in the survey. Charles F. Parker is grateful for the financial support provided by the Centre for Natural Disaster Science (CNDS).

Notes

1. The response rate to this question was 80%.