COLLEGE OF EUROPEBRUGES CAMPUSIRD DEPARTMENT
The EU at the UNFCCC: a newparadigm?
An interdisciplinary analysis ofclimate negotiations since
Copenhagen
Supervisor: Christian Egenhofer Thesis presented byErik Lindner Olssonfor theDegree of Master of EU International Relations anddiplomacy studies
Academic Year 2014-2015
Statutory Declaration
I hereby declare that this thesis has been written by myself
without any external unauthorised help, that it has been
neither presented to any institution for evaluation nor
previously published in its entirety or in parts. Any parts,
words or ideas, of the thesis, however limited, and including
tables, graphs, maps etc., which are quoted from or based on
other sources, have been acknowledged as such without
exception.
Moreover, I have also taken note and accepted the College
rules with regard to plagiarism (Section 4.2 of the College
study regulations).
ii
AbstractHas the experience of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties
in Copenhagen created a new paradigm in the European Union’s
approach to climate negotiations? This is a question that has
been increasingly central to academic discussions of the
European Union (EU) as an international climate actor. This
study further explores that question, and seeks to challenge
some of the approaches within studies of the EU’s role of
climate negotiations from Copenhagen onward by introducing an
interdisciplinary perspective, through the use of literature
in regime theory by authors such as Arild Underdal, Scott
Barrett and Frank Grundig. The study further contextualises
its observations with information from interviews with EU
officials, in an effort to shed more light on the less
researched informal arrangements for EU negotiations within
the global climate diplomacy infrastructure. The main
conclusions of the study is that while the post-Copenhagen
climate process has undergone changes that can qualify as a
paradigm shift, the EU’s own approach remains rooted in the
same principal objectives as in the past, albeit with new
instruments and approaches being applied. The study also finds
that EU performance in climate negotiations is often
erroneously evaluated according to the organisation’s own
objectives, rather than the general potential for the
conclusion of an effective regime. An additional conclusion is
that research in the field of EU studies fails to take into
account a growing range of forums and actors making up the
climate negotiation process, both inside and outside the
iv
conventional negotiation process of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Based on
these findings, it is recommended that analyses originating in
the field of EU studies would benefit from using a broader
scope of perspectives, and that interdisciplinary approaches
to the EU’s role in climate negotiations would be able to
produce added value for future research in the field.
v
Keywords
Climate Negotiations
Climate regime
Copenhagen climate conference
DG Climate Action
European Union
International Cooperation
Regime Theory
Paradigm
Public Goods
UNFCCC
vi
Table of ContentsStatutory Declaration.......................................ii
Abstract...................................................iii
Keywords....................................................iv
List of Figures............................................vii
List of Abbreviations.....................................viii
1 Introduction.............................................1
2 The climate issue, regime theory, the UNFCCC and the EU:
an overview..................................................4
2.1 Public goods, environmental regimes and strategies....4
2.1.1 Climate as a public good: projections and models...6
2.2 Environmental agreements as regimes...................9
2.3 The UNFCCC framework.................................12
2.4 The EU as an international climate actor.............15
2.4.1 The evolution of climate policy as an EU external
competence..............................................15
2.4.2 Evaluating EU actorness in climate negotiations...17
2.4.3 The EU’s institutional configuration for climate
negotiations............................................18
3 A Copenhagen paradigm shift? the EU at COP 15 and beyond 21
3.1 The EU at the 2009 Copenhagen COP 15 and its inter-
sessional meetings........................................21
3.2 Outcome of COP 15....................................23
3.3 From Copenhagen to Paris: a new paradigm in EU climate
negotiations?.............................................26
4 Setting the record straight: perspectives from
practitioners...............................................31
vii
4.1 The Copenhagen climate conference....................31
4.1.1 The political environment.........................32
4.1.2 EU influence in the negotiation process...........32
4.1.3 Other actors at Copenhagen........................33
4.2 The Copenhagen experience and EU informal arrangements
33
4.2.1 The lack of a negotiation mandate.................34
4.2.2 A broadening negotiation process..................35
4.2.3 Informal arrangements with other actors...........36
4.3 The post-Copenhagen paradigm.........................37
5 Challenging our understanding: The EU as a climate actor
and the post-Copenhagen paradigm revisited..................40
5.1 A post-Copenhagen paradigm or an enhanced negotiation
approach?.................................................41
6 Conclusion..............................................43
Bibliography................................................45
ANNEX I: Transcript of Interview with Anders Turesson.......56
ANNEX II: Interview with Anonymous Council Official.........65
ANNEX III: Interview with Anonymous Commission Official, third
party relations.............................................74
ANNEX IV: Transcript - Interview with Anonymous Commission
Official, internal coordination.............................79
viii
List of Figures
Figure 1 The IPCC's emissions scenarios as presented in the
2000 special report on emissions scenarios...............7
Figure 2 IPCC projections over four scenarios from the 5th
assessment report........................................9
Figure 3 Schipper's pathways for responding to climate change.
........................................................11
Figure 4 The structure of the UNFCCC system.................13
Figure 5 Schematic of model for assessing impact at Copenhagen
by Eppstein et al.......................................25
ix
List of Abbreviations
ADP Ad-hoc working group on the Durban
platform
AR Annual Report (IPCC)
AWG Ad-Hoc Working Group
CBDR Common but differentiated
responsibilities
CMP Meeting of the Parties (Kyoto
Protocol)
COP Conference of the Parties
DG CLIMA Directorate-General for Climate
Action (EU)
DG ENVI Directorate-General for Environment
(EU)
EC European Commission
EEAS European External Action Service
EIT Economies in Transition
EU European Union
FAC Foreign Affairs Council
GCF Green Climate Fund
GDN Green Diplomacy Network
HST Hegemonic Stability Theory
x
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change
KP Kyoto Protocol
LCA Long-term Cooperation
RCI Rational Choice Institutionalism
REDD (+) Reducing emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation
REIO Regional Economic Integration
Organisation
SBI Subsidiary body for Implementation
SBSTA Subsidiary Body for Scientific and
Technological Advice
SEA Self-Enforcing agreement
SI Social Institutionalism
TEU Treaty on European Union
TFEU Treaty on the Functioning of the
European Union
UN United Nations
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change
WPIEI Working Party on International
Environmental Issues
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1 IntroductionIn the lead up to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP), to
take place in December 2009 in Copenhagen, hopes for an
ambitious agreement to tackle climate change reached new
heights. The European Union (EU) consistently stressed the
absolute importance of an agreement, stating that:
”The EU is pressing for a global, ambitious,
comprehensive and legally binding international treaty
that will prevent global warming from reaching the
dangerous levels. The global warming average temperature
needs to be kept below 2°C above the pre-industrial level
in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate
change.”1
Less than a year later, it was clear that none of this was
to become real. While the Copenhagen Accord represented some
progress, it was far from what EU negotiators had hoped for,
with Commission President Barroso stating, “quite simply, our
level of ambition has not been matched.”2
There has been significant academic investigation of COP
15, and the subsequent efforts to build an alternative
agreement. These studies have often focused on faults in the
EU’s internal organisation and climate strategy, yet an area
that has been more scarcely documented is the role that inter-
sessional negotiations have played for the EU’s negotiation1 European Commission, “The Copenhagen climate change negotiations:EU position and state of play”, MEMO/09/493, Brussels, 9 November2009.2 European Commission, ”Statement of President Barroso on theCopenhagen Climate Accord”, SPEECH/09/588, Brussels, 19 December2009.
13
strategy, notably with regards to evolving third party
positions. It became increasingly clear during the preparatory
meetings of the Copenhagen conference that the United States
(US) would not accept the EU’s proposal for a legally binding
agreement,3 and neither would China4. Further, while
substantial research of the climate negotiation process exists
both in the field of regime studies, as well as within the
European Union literature, these two fields remain subjected
to a form of silo mentality. This thus raises a set of
questions for our understanding of climate negotiations. Were
EU negotiators fully aware of the level of opposition they
would face at Copenhagen? Are the EU’s arrangements for
climate negotiations detrimental to absorbing and reacting to
third party positions? How has the experience of Copenhagen
affected the EU’s approach to climate negotiations? These
questions, associated with the post-Copenhagen climate regime,
together feed into a larger, overarching question: has the EU,
as some authors claim, entered a new paradigm in climate
negotiations following Copenhagen?56 These questions become
particularly pertinent, given the similarly high expectations
3 G. Bang & M. A. Scheurs, ”A Green New Deal: framing US climateleadership”, The European Union as a leader in International Climate Change Politics,R. K. W. W. Wurzel & J. Connelly (eds.), London, Routledge, 2011,p. 247.4 X. Dai & Z. Diao, “Towards a new world order for climate change:China and the European Union’s leadership ambition”, The EuropeanUnion as a leader in International Climate Change Politics, R. K. W. W. Wurzel & J.Connelly (eds.), London, Routledge, 2011, pp. 264-266.5 Falkner et al., ”International Climate Policy after Copenhagen:Towards a ’Building Blocks’ Approach”, Global Climate Policy, vol. 1, no.3, 2010.6 S. Fischer & O. Geden, ”The Change Role of InternationalNegotiations in EU Climate Policy”, The International Spectator: Italian Journalof International Affairs, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 1-7.
14
ahead of COP 21 in Paris later this year. This analysis will
thus investigate the above questions and examine how the
experience of COP 15 has affected the EU’s negotiating
strategy ahead of Paris, so as to improve our understanding of
the EU’s evolution as a climate negotiator.
To investigate this, the analysis in this study is
structured in four parts with the intention of providing an
interdisciplinary perspective of EU engagement with third
parties. The first chapter provides a general overview of
climate change as an international issue, regime theoretical
approaches to climate governance, the UNFCCC as an
institutional setting for climate negotiations, and the EU as
an international climate actor. The purpose of the chapter is
to provide a basis in regime studies to demonstrate that the
EU’s performance in climate negotiations should not be
conditioned only by our understanding of its own nature as a
climate negotiator, but also the environment it operates
within. Based on that foundation, the second chapter focuses
on how existing literature approaches COP 15 in 2009 and how
the EU’s approach to climate negotiations evolved as a
consequence, and whether this evolution constitutes a paradigm
shift. The purpose here is to establish what answers existing
literature can provide for the questions raised above about
changes in the EU’s role in the UNFCCC negotiation process,
and whether the regime studies perspective can offer a
complimentary element. Those findings are then contrasted in
the third chapter by introducing findings from interviews with
practitioners in EU climate negotiations, so as to identify
inconsistencies and new areas of investigation that may
15
improve our understanding of the EU as a climate actor. The
fourth chapter then brings together the first three chapters
to outline whether the academic understanding of the EU’s role
in international climate governance accurately captures how
the EU conducts climate negotiations, in particular with
regards to third parties and a possible new paradigm, or
whether the interviews introduced in chapter three provide us
with a basis for rethinking and further investigating the
field.
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2 The climate issue, regime theory, the UNFCCCand the EU: an overviewThis chapter lays the ground for examining climate
negotiations at Copenhagen and after, by providing an overview
of how academic literature currently understands the issue of
international climate governance and the EU’s infrastructure
for engaging with it. The section begins with a broader
perspective on regime studies, environmental economics and
climate science to set the stage for the climate negotiation
environment, and will then narrow its focus to the EU’s nature
as a climate actor.
2.1 Public goods, environmental regimes and strategies
When discussing climate change a definition is in order.
The terms “global warming” and “climate change” are often used
interchangeably, but it is important to note that the term
climate change may equally refer to a natural process of
changes in the Earth’s climate resulting from processes that
are not man-made.7 To some extent, global warming is a more
accurate term in that it refers to the increase in global
temperature caused by anthropogenic (human) activity. Yet
global warming may not accurately capture the phenomena
associated with anthropogenic climate change, such as extreme
weather events.8 This study concerns itself with anthropogenic
climate change in the form that the IPCC envisages it,
7 B. Lomborg, The Sceptical Environmentalists: Measuring the Real State of The World,Cambridge, CUP, 2001, P. 259-260.8 IPCC, “Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report – Summary forPolicymakers”, 2014.
17
including extreme weather events and adverse consequences both
for human and non-human life.
The environment, including climate change, can be
considered a public good at virtually all levels of study,
which contributes to its complexity as a problem. This is
because a public good can be understood as a good that is non-
excludable and non-rivalrous; that is to say, once the good is
provided, it is impossible to prevent actors from accessing it
regardless of their contribution to its provision, and the use
of the good by one actor does not limit simultaneous use by
another.9 The second aspect of this may be discussed in the
context of the international environment given the limited
nature of carbon stocks, but certainly the current dynamic of
environmental politics appears to adhere to the logic of a
public good.10 As Mancur Olson argues, the fundamental problem
of a public good is to ensure its provision through collective
action while simultaneously limiting free riding, the practice
of profiting from a good without contributing to it.11 As
Hardin suggests in the Tragedy of the Commons, rational
individual behaviour leads to collectively suboptimal
results,12 resulting in what Olson calls collective action
problems.
9 F. Grundig and H. Ward, “Structural Group Leadership and RegimeEffectiveness”, Political Studies, vol. 63, no. 1, March 2015, p. 222.10 J. Hovi et al., “Implementing Long-Term Climate Change Policy:Time Inconsistency, Domestic Politics, International Anarchy”, GlobalEnvironmental Politics, vol. 9, no. 3, August 2009, p. 20. 11 M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: public goods and theory of groups,Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 9-16.12 G. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science, no. 162, 13December 1968, 1243-1248.
18
Public goods can be provided relatively easily at the
national level through the use of centralised authority, by
making mandatory the contribution to the provision of a good
within a governance structure.13 However, the absence of such
authority at the international level creates a different
dynamic. Some authors point to hegemonic stability theory14 as
a primary means of ensuring delivery, but as will be discussed
further below, the ability for a single actor to force
compliance with a public goods regime is increasingly
unfeasible.
The provision of a public good also involves some measure
of cost. In the context of climate change, this cost is
significant, as undertaking emission mitigation involves
imposing restrictions on certain types of economic activity,
often cheaper production methods.15 While modelling of costs of
environmental costs arising from climate-related damage over
time are subject to constant debate and uncertainty, some
points stand true: first, both the emission of gases
contributing to climate change and the potential damage
resulting therefrom are unevenly distributed globally.16 This
results in some actors having a narrower cost-benefit margin,
thus becoming less interested in providing the good in
13 S. Barrett, “Self-Enforcing International EnvironmentalAgreements”, Oxford Economic Papers, no. 46 (special issue onenvironmental economics), 1994, pp. 878-881.14 O. Young, “Political leadership and regime formation: on thedevelopment of institutions in international society”, InternationalOrganisation, vol. 45, no. 3, June 1991, P. 286.15 A. Giddens, The politics of Climate Change, 2nd ed., Cambridge, PolityPress, 2011, pp. 57-58.16 S. Barrett, Environment and Statecraft: the strategy of environmental treaty-making, Oxford, OUP, 2003, pp. 53-56.
19
question.17 An example to this point is that the average
American citizen emits 17.6 metric tons of CO2 (2010 figures)
compared to 1.7 metric tons for every Indian inhabitant.18 Yet
projections indicate that agricultural yields in the US may
see a net increase by 2100 due to climate change, as opposed
to a fall in yields in Northern India by nearly 70%, while
rapid population increase is expected.19 Thus, the cost-benefit
analysis for actors varies greatly. Second, the political
responsibility for undertaking abatement costs is unclear.
While the EU has accepted responsibility to undertake heavier
costs on the basis that it is economically capable to do so,
this has not been the case in the US.20 Conversely, developing
states such as China and India stress the historical
responsibility for carbon stocks21 by developed states, and on
that basis defend the fact that emissions now increasingly
originate in emerging markets, with China overtaking the US in
gross CO2 emissions measured in metric tonnes in 2006.22 This
tension over how to distribute mitigation costs among various
actors is captured in the notion of common but differentiated
responsibilities (CBDR), a concept that has been subject to
much dispute in climate negotiations.23
17 Ibid, p. 56.18 From the World Bank’s development indicators online database, seebibliography.19 N. Stern, “Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change”,Independent Review, HM Treasury, London, 2006, p. 1320 G. Bang & M. A. Scheurs, op. cit., p. 235.21 Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for approximately 100years, creating a historical stock. This shifts discussions onemissions to historical responsibility.22 J. E. Aldy & R. N. Stavins, “Climate Negotiators create anopportunity for scholars”, Science, no. 337, 31 August 2012.23 P. Pauw et al., “Different perspectives on differentiatedresponsibilities”, discussion paper, German development institute,
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2.1.1 Climate as a public good: projections and models
Climate science has certainly not been a stranger to
controversy. In several political narratives, in particular in
the US, a phenomenon of ‘believing’ in climate change has
taken up significant space in the public dialogue, which is
particularly curious given the scientific nature of the
problem. Such debates are proving very unhelpful, in
particular in the light of mounting scientific evidence for
anthropogenic climate change. The most authoritative body on
the issue, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
found in its 2014 synthesis report (assessment report 5) that:
“Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent
anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest
in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread
impacts on human and natural systems.”24
June 2014, P. 3.24 IPCC, “Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report – Summary forPolicymakers”, 2014, p. 2.
21
What popular debate on climate change often fails to
capture is not whether anthropogenic climate change is
occurring, but rather to what extent human activity influences
the climate now and in the future. This is where debate still
exists within international climate politics. In its prolific
2000 special report on emissions scenarios, the IPCC developed
an intricate system of scenarios (see fig. 1).25 The number of
scenarios reflects the complexity of assessing the trends and
consequences of emissions, for a number of reasons.
First, emissions trends are subjected to economic
projections which themselves are unreliable. An example of
this is the reduction of European emissions as a consequence
of the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing debt crisis.26 Second,
while climate change can be linked to adverse changes in our
25 IPCC, “Emissions Scenarios: summary for policy makers”, 2000, p.4.26 S. J. Davis and K. Caldeira, “Consumption-based accounting of CO2
emissions”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), vol. 107, no.12, March 23 2010, p. 5687.
Figure 1 The IPCC's emissions scenarios as presented in the 2000 special
report on emissions scenarios.
22
environment, the subsequent damage is hard to assess, as
damage in itself is not easily conceptualised.27 Most often,
climate economists interpret damage in terms of economic loss
over time, or discount rates. The use of discount rates has
created a broad range of results, from the Stern Review
arguing for 1% of global GDP being invested in mitigation and
adaptation,28 to Nordhaus rejecting any significant
investment.29 These projections are also subjected to changing
technological circumstances, as technologies are developed to
phase out emissions or make adaptation cheaper, albeit in an
uncertain manner.30
Fundamentally, projections are subject to a high degree of
uncertainty, In particular those for impacts and adaptation,
and adherence to specific scenarios is thus a mix of political
interest and scientific conviction. As we shall see, this is
one of the contributing factors to the broad range of
different positions on climate action. There is some
controversy as to which target for limiting global temperature
increase should be employed. At COP 15 in 2009, and later
legally endorsed at COP 20 in Cancun, the UNFCCC adopted a
target of limiting temperature increase to below 2°C above
1990 levels. As the IPCC finds:
27 S. Caney, “Human rights, climate change, and discounting”,Environmental Politics, vol. 17, no. 4, 2008, p. 540.28 M. L. Weitzman, “A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics ofClimate Change”, Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 45, no. 3, Sep. 2007,p. 708.29 E. Neumayer, “Global warming: discounting is not the issue,substitutability is”, Energy Policy, no. 27, 1999, p. 33.30 J. H. Ausubel, “Technical progress and climatic change”, EnergyPolicy, vo. 23, no. 4/5, 1995, p. 416.
23
“Risks of global aggregate impacts are moderate for
additional warming between 1–2°C, reflecting impacts to
both Earth’s biodiversity and the overall global economy
(medium confidence). Extensive biodiversity loss with
associated loss of ecosystem goods and services results
in high risks around 3°C additional warming (high
confidence). Aggregate economic damages accelerate with
increasing temperature (limited evidence, high
agreement), but few quantitative estimates have been
completed for additional warming around 3°C or above.”31
It must however be stressed that a temperature below a 2°C
increase would still incur significant damage for the global
climate, notably for small developing island states (SIDS), as
sea rise threatens to submerge large parts of their territory.
Other areas identified by the IPCC that are expected to be
affected disproportionately are coastal areas, food production
near the equator, and tropical areas where disease may become
more prevalent.32
31 IPCC, “Climate Change 2014: impacts, adaptation, andvulnerability – summary for policymakers”, 2014, p. 11. 32 Ibid, p. 13.
24
Figure 2 shows the IPCC’s later scenarios as outlined in
assessment report 5 (AR5).33 What the graph indicates is that
under the more likely scenario based on current trends
(RCP8.5), there is a high probability that without further
mitigation, global temperatures will surpass the 2°C target,
possibly reaching as high as 4°C.
It is based on this scientific premise that a need for a
global regime for limiting human action contributing to
climate change has emerged. We will now proceed to examine the
dynamics of environmental agreements as international regimes.
2.2 Environmental agreements as regimes
The previously mentioned lack of central authority in the
international system means that a public good such as
environmental protection must be delivered through a regime,
in the form of an international agreement that changes the
behaviour of the actors capable of affecting climate change.
33 IPCC, Op. Cit., “Climate Change 2014”, p. 11.
Figure 2 IPCC projections over four scenarios from the 5th assessment
report.
25
In Krasner’s34 definition, a regime is a “set of implicit or
explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making
procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a
given area of international relations”. According to
Underdal,35 a regime may be assessed in three stages:
1. Output – negotiating a regime acceptable to all parties
involved. This stage includes the conclusion of a regime
through signature and putting domestic measures into
effect.
2. Outcome – the stage at which measures have been put in
effect, and a change in behaviour can be observed among
relevant target groups.
3. Impact – the consequences observed in the issue in
question by the change in behaviour that is created
through outcome.
As this overview indicates, regime formulation not only
involves delivering a solution to a problem, but one that will
result in set of regulations that can guarantee a specific
impact on how the environment is governed. For the purposes of
this study, the first stage, output, will be the primary point
of analysis. As discussed earlier, the basis for regime
formation can come from different sources. There are
historical cases of a state holding enough influence in a
specific issue so as to either unilaterally provide a public
good, or coerce other actors into subscribing to a regime
34 S. D. Krasner, International Regimes, 1983, Ithaca, Cornell UniversityPress, p. 2. 35 A. Underdal, “One Question, Two Answers” in Eduard Miles et al(eds.), Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence,Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2005, p. 7.
26
under what is known as hegemonic stability theory (HST).36 HST
appears to be less applicable to international climate
politics for two reasons. First, the nature of abatement
suggests that unilaterally providing emissions reduction would
not only be costly, but also reduce economic power relative to
other actors over time. Second, emissions are distributed over
a broad range of economically powerful states, making it hard
to coerce all necessary actors into conformity. This
understanding is supported by Hugh Ward and Frank Grundig, who
in their model find that environmental regime effectiveness
depends on US participation, and conversely the US is not
sufficient to ensure effectiveness alone.37 This form of
regression analysis of international climate negotiations
takes a prominent role in regime studies, but as we will see
they remain absent in the field of European Union studies. An
alternative solution would be to establish centralised
authority by creating a supervisory institution. However, this
would suggest that there is already sufficient consensus to
empower that organisation as an agent for developing a climate
change regime, raising questions about its necessity for
creating an institution in the first place.38
36 O. S. Stokke, “Regimes as Governance Systems”, Global Governance:drawing insights from the environmental experience”, Oran Young (ed.),Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1997.37 F. Grundig & H. Ward, Op. Cit., pp. 237-239.38 A. Najam, M. Papa & N. Taiyab, Global Environmental Governance: a ReformAgenda, Winnipeg, International Institute for SustainableDevelopment, 2006, pp. 30-32.
27
Thus, Barrett argues that a climate change agreement will
have to be a self-enforcing agreement (SEA), in which
participants voluntarily subscribe to a regime on the basis of
a favourable cost-benefit analysis.39 In order for this to be
possible, Grundig40 argues that three conditions must be
fulfilled. First, no member should benefit from withdrawing.
Second, no member should benefit from being noncompliant.
Third, the first two conditions must hold without external
enforcement. While a number of academic visions exist of an
SEA, including stringent enforcement mechanisms, SEA’s
proposed in international environmental politics have relied
predominantly on norms-based commitments where actors attempt
39 S. Barrett, Op. Cit., Environment and statecraft, pp. 397-398.40 F. Grundig, “Political strategy and climate policy: a rationalchoice perspective”, Environmental Politics vol. 18, no. 5, 2009, p. 750.
Figure 3 Schipper's pathways for responding to climate change.
28
to extract reciprocal commitments at a satisfactory level with
little or no consequences for intentional non-compliance.41 The
main exception to this is the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which
could rely on enforcement through management of private goods,
as production of chlorofluorocarbons and other substances were
produced by a limited number of states.42 This is natural,
given that the distribution of bargaining power makes states
able to avoid subjecting themselves to punitive mechanisms. It
is also important to recognise the mitigation-adaptation
dichotomy; as Schipper argues, any commitment to reducing
emissions will not be immediately visible, and so
international climate action becomes subjected to a discourse
dilemma where calls for mitigation and adaption make up a set
of pathways which negotiations move through (see figure 3).43
This creates an interlinkage between the two issues that has
remained persistent throughout the climate regime negotiation
process.
Following this examination of the regime studies
perspective on climate change, we will proceed to examine the
political arrangements for governing climate change, by
examining the UNFCCC framework and the EU as an environmental
actor.
41 J. Hovi, C. Bretteville Froyn & G. Bang, “Enforcing the KyotoProtocol: can punitive consequences restore compliance?”, Review ofInternational Studies, vol. 33, no. 3, 2007, P. 436.42 Barrett, Op. Cit., Environment and Statecraft, p. 239.43 E. L. F. Schipper, “Conceptual History of Adaption in the UNFCCCProcess”, Reciel, vol. 15, no. 1, 2006, p. 85.
29
2.3 The UNFCCC framework
The international climate regime can be considered a subset
of the global environmental governance infrastructure, with
its origins in the United Nations (UN) system. Throughout the
20th Century, the UN has produced what Seyfang44 calls four
environmental mega-conferences, which are:
1. The Conference on Human Environment (UNCHE), 1972,
Stockholm;
2. The Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
also known as the Rio Earth Summit, 1992, Rio;
3. The General Assembly Special Session on Sustainable
Development, or Earth Summit II, 1997, New York;
4. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD),
2002, Johannesburg.
These conferences have over time raised the profile of
environmental governance on the global agenda, and during the
second mega-summit, the Rio Earth Summit, the members of the
UN agreed to establish a framework convention on climate
change (UNFCCC). The agreement on the UNFCCC was concluded
with its signature in 1992, and the Convention formally
entered into force in 1994.45 From then onwards, the UNFCCC has
served as the primary forum for negotiations on an agreement
to address climate change and its consequences. The first
agreement produced by the UNFCCC was the Kyoto protocol (KP)
of 1997, but this agreement has seen growing non-compliance44 G. Seyfang & A. Jordan, ”The Johannesburg Summit and SustainableDevelopment: How Effective Are Environmental Conferences?”, O. S.Stokke & O. B. Thommessen (eds.), Yearbook of International Co-operation onEnvironment and Development 2002/2003, London, Earthscan Publications,2002, p. 20.45 S. Barrett, op. cit., Environment and Statecraft, pp. 368-369.
30
due to substantial flaws in its regime design.46 As such, the
parties of the UNFCCC have now moved on to negotiate a new
agreement, which is to replace the KP paradigm. It is this
period that the present study seeks to investigate.
A few key aspects of the UNFCCC must be noted. First, the
UNFCCC does not impose any concrete obligations on its
members, but rather forms a framework for negotiations on
climate governance.47 Second, the UNFCCC in its founding treaty
divides its members into Annex I parties, consisting of
industrialised economies and economies in transition (EIT,
post-soviet parties), while leaving developing states as non-
annex parties, including China.48 Third, the Convention
established consensus as the decision-making rule.49 As we will
46 Hovi et al., op. cit., “Enforing the Kyoto Protocol”, pp. 440-445.47 S. Barrett, op. cit., Environment and Statecraft, p. 369.48 F. Yamin & J. Depledge, The International Climate Change Regime: A Guide toRules, Institutions, and Procedures, Cambridge, CUP, 1004, p. 107.49 See UNFCCC (English version), art. 7(k).
Figure 4 The structure of the UNFCCC system.
31
see, these aspects play a key role in UNFCCC climate
governance.
Since the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the
UNFCCC structure has been divided into two tracks; the ad-hoc
working group for long-term cooperation action (AWG-LCA, since
2011 referred to as the Durban platform for enhanced action or
ADP), and the ad-hoc working group for the Kyoto Protocol
(AWG-KP).50 Each track has its own annual summit, the
conference of the parties (COP) and the meeting of the parties
(CMP) respectively. In 2012 at COP 18 in Doha, the work of
AWG-KP was officially concluded.51 For the purposes of this
study, we will focus on the first track. The COP sessions in
turn have two subsidiary bodies for scientific and
technological advice (SBSTA) and Implementation (SBI), which
have subsidiary expert groups for technology transfer and LCD
implementation respectively.52 The Convention has its own
secretariat and president, while the COP, SBSTA and SBI have
their own bureaus. COP sessions are mandated by the UNFCCC to
take place annually unless the parties decide otherwise. So
far no change has been made to this practice, although some
parties suggest this to be exhaustive.53 While in session, the
working bodies of the COP traditionally divide into informal
working groups targeting specific issues such as finance,
reporting and more. Apart from COP sessions, the AWG-LCA/ADP
officially meets in four meetings (which may have sub-
50 UNFCCC, decision 1/CMP.1, Official Journal of the United Nations,FCC/KP/CMP/2005/8/Add.1, Montreal, 10 December 2005.51 UNFCCC, decision 1/CMP.8 (the Doha Amendment), Official Journal of theUnited Nations, FCC/KP/CMP/2012/13/add.1, Doha, 8 December 2012.52 F. Yamin & J. Depledge, op. cit., p. 415.53 ibid, p. 408.
32
meetings) throughout the year.54 Each COP has a presidency that
presides over the bureau, which traditionally is the country
hosting the conference. As specified in the COP rules of
procedure, the responsibilities of the COP presidency include
chairing the Conference and upholding the rules of procedure,
including arranging schedules and putting questions to a vote.
The presidency “remains under the authority of the
Conference”, and should thus remain impartial.55
What is clear from this structure, in particular when
keeping in mind the separate structures under the Kyoto
Protocol is that any party would have to invest significant
amounts of time and resources to gain a full overview of
technical and political aspects of the UNFCCC process. As we
shall see, combining this complicated structure with the far
from straightforward EU structure creates a specific set of
difficulties.
2.4 The EU as an international climate actor
This section outlines the EU’s nature as an actor in
international climate politics by examining literature on EU
actorness, the evolution climate policy as an EU competence,
and the institutional arrangements for international climate
negotiations.
2.4.1 The evolution of climate policy as an EU external competence
The EU’s competence in climate policy has grown out of the
gradual expansion of EU coordination within general
54 Ibid, pp. 407-408.55 Ibid, pp. 413-414.
33
environmental and energy policy. Integration within the field
of environment has played a central role in the evolution of
external competences, notably through disputes such as ERTA
and Opinion 1/76 – Rhine River Barges.56 As a policy area that
interacts with many aspects of governance, from industry, to
energy, to food standards, an increasingly dense web of
legislation has enabled the EU institutions to take on an
increasing responsibility for international environmental
relations. As in ERTA however, EU competence has grown out of
the principle of In Foro Interno, In Foro Externo, thus meaning that
internal competence and action must precipitate external
competence.57 This is problematic for climate negotiations,
given the broad range of policy areas concerned with it. As
the Member States have sought to retain significant
competences for themselves, notably the right to determine the
composition of their energy mix, the competence to participate
in environmental negotiations has always been divided between
Member States and EU institutions.58 In the Lisbon treaty59
environment was clearly spelled out in in art. 4(3)TFEU as a
shared competence, and external competence was given to the EU
and its Member States “within their spheres of competences” in
art. 191(4)TFEU.
56 J. Vogler, “The Challenge of the Environment, Energy, and ClimateChange”, International Relations and the European Union, Ed. C. Hill and M.Smith, Oxford: OUP, 2011, p. 354.57 Ibid, pp. 351-353.58 T. Delreux, & K. Van den Brande, “Taking the lead: informaldivision of labour in the EU’s external environment policy-making”,Journal of European Public Policy Vol. 20, no. 1, 2013, pp. 115-120.59 European Union, Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and theTreaty Establishing the European Community, Official Journal of the EuropeanUnion, 2007/C/306/01, 13 December 2007.
34
The EU’s role in climate negotiations is demonstrated by
its presence as early as the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, where
the UNFCCC was agreed upon and opened for signature. It was
thanks to this early presence that the EU and its members
ensured that a regional economic integration organisation
(REIO) clause was included in the Convention, thus opening up
for EU membership in its own right, albeit without a vote.60
The EU was as such a participant in UNFCCC negotiations
already in 1994, and increasingly sought to take on a
leadership role.61 EU documentation reveals how several
interests for the EU in doing so have evolved, such as
obtaining the first-mover advantage in green industry,
improving security of supply in energy by reducing demand for
fossil fuel imports, and creating green growth through
transitioning into a zero-carbon economy.62 This is supported
by Van Schaik and Schunz, who point to climate change as an
economic opportunity and energy security issue for the EU.63
Drawing on Ian Manners’ work,64 Sebastian Oberthür,65 as
well as Parker and Karlsson, has famously argued, that the EU
60 J. Vogler, op. cit., p. 351.61 C. F. Parker & C. Karlsson, “Climate Change and the EuropeanUnion’s Leadership Moment: An Inconvenient Truth?”, JCMS: Journal ofCommon Market Studies vol, 48, no. 4, 2010, pp. 923-930.62 European Commission, “A Framework Strategy for a Resilient EnergyUnion with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy”, COM(2015) 80final, Brussels, 25 February 2015.63 L. Van Schaik & S. Schunz, ”Explaining EU Activism and Impact inGlobal Climate Politics: is the Union a Norm- or Interest-drivenactor?”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 176-177.64 I. Manners, ”Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?”,JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 235-258.65 S. Oberthür, ‘Global climate governance after Cancun: options forEU leadership’, The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs,vol. 46, no. 1, 2011, pp. 5-13.
35
has gone beyond a purely interested-oriented understanding of
climate change to pursue the role of a normative leader.66 This
is made clear in the 2020 Climate and Energy Package, where
the Commission sees the EU “take the lead internationally”
against climate change “to 2020 and beyond”.67 The EU and its
Member States have consistently made ambitious commitments to
climate mitigation, such as in the 20-20-20 plan, and played a
key role in ensuring that the Kyoto Protocol could enter into
force by investing itself in bilateral negotiations with
Russia.68 Since 2007, the EU has also affirmed its support for
the below 2°C target, and seeks to ensure that arrangements
under an agreement can meet it.69 Van Schaik and Schunz also
make these observations to conclude that EU actorness is
driven by a mix of norms and interest, going as far as to
argue that normative concerns are the primary driver.70 It is
also possible to argue that as a clearly international issue,
climate change is an ideal issue for the EU to extend its own
international role and relevance.71 This is a modus operandi
often discussed for the EU as well as international
institutions at large.72
66 C. F. Parker & C. Karlsson, op. cit., pp. 925-926.67 European Commission, “Limiting Global Climate Change to 2 degreesCelsius – The way ahead for 2020 and beyond”, COM(2007) 2 final, 10January 2007, p. 2.68 R. D. Keleman, “The EU as a Global Actor: Grand Strategy for aGlobal Grand Bargain?”, JCMS: Journal o European Public Policy, vol. 17, no.3, 2010, p. 340.69 European Commission, Op. Cit., “A Framework Strategy”, p. 3.70 Van Schaik & Schunz, op. Cit., 182-186.71 C. F. Parker & C. Karlsson, op. cit., p. 924.72 M. N. Barnett & M. Finnemore, “The Politics, Power andPathologies of International Organisations”, International Organisation,vol. 53, no. 4, 1999, pp. 699-732.
36
The EU’s history as an international climate actor thus
tells us that it has a vested interest in ensuring the driving
of the process of developing of a viable climate change
regime, also implying a need to take into account the
positions of third parties to ensure their compliance. At the
same time, an agreement would have to meet expectations for a
desirable outcome among the EU’s constituent Member States and
institutions, placing constraints on an acceptable output. For
the purposes of this thesis, we will now move on to examine
the EU’s own institutional configuration for climate
negotiations to identify what limitations these may impose on
the EU’s ability to engage with and react constructively to
third party positions.
2.4.2 Evaluating EU actorness in climate negotiations
A broad range of literature exists on the topic of EU
actorness, including works by Allen & Smith on presence,73
Jupille and Caporaso’s actorness taxonomy,74 Bretherton and
Vogler’s focus on opportunity, presence and capabilities,75 and
others. In the context of climate negotiations, Tom Delreux’s
work76 on EU actorness in environmental affairs provides a
73 D. Allen & M. Smith, “The European Union’s Security Presence:Barrier, Facilitator, or Manager?”, in Carolyn Rhodes (ed.), TheEuropean Union in the World Community, London, Lynne Rienner Publishers,1998.74 J. Jupille & J. A. Caporaso, “States, Agency, and Rules: TheEuropean Union in Global Environmental Politics”, in Carolyn Rhodes(ed.), The European Union in the World Community, London, Lynne RiennerPublishers, 1998, pp. 213-229.75 C. Bretherton & J. Vogler, ”Conceptualising EU actorness”, TheEuropean Union as a Global Actor, London, Routledge, 2006, 2nd edn, pp.12-61.76 T. Delreux, The EU as International Climate Negotiator, Farnham, AshgatePublishing Limited, 2011.
37
thourough overview. In applying principal-agent theory,
Delreux recognises Rasmussen’s emphasis on social relations
between principals and agents, and points to normative
pressure in establishing delegation of authority.77 Delreux
further contrasts rational choice institutionalism’s (RCI)
emphasis on the dual presence of Member States and the
Commission as a control function for Member States with
sociological institutionalism, further highlighting how an
atmosphere of partnership represents a positive normative
aspects and possibly convergence.78 A potential criticism of
Delreux’s use of principal-agent theory is its emphasis on
formal institutional arrangements, which may fail to capture
how negotiations are informally arranged on the ground.
Delreux also recognises how informal arrangements remain less
explored by academia.79 What Delreux’s analysis would tell us
however, is that the EU’s ability to adjust its strategy in
relation to third parties is significantly constrained by the
checks and balances contained within the principal-agent
relationship that plays out during UNFCCC negotiations. This
is an expectation that we will examine in detail in the
following sections.
2.4.3 The EU’s institutional configuration for climatenegotiations
The EU’s institutional configuration for negotiations in
the UNFCCC is far from straightforward. The EU (using the
legal personality of the European Community) signed the UNFCCC
as a regional economic integration organisation (REIO), and is77 Ibid, pp. 49-50.78 Ibid, p. 51.79 T. Delreux, Tom, & K. Van den Brande, op. cit., p. 114.
38
thus a party without a separate vote from its members. Under
article 3(k) of the Maastricht Treaty, the EU was to have “a
policy in the sphere of the environment”, establishing some
competence at the EU level.80 Nevertheless, Member States also
retained the right to legislate on environment, a principle
that remains under Lisbon, where environment is defined as a
shared competence.81 This has meant that the EU must represent
itself next to the Member States in their own right, in turn
creating a need for establishing practices for common
representation and negotiation. To achieve this, so-called
“practical arrangements” have been employed, wherein EU actors
and Member States arrive at a common agreement over a
distribution of responsibilities.82 Traditionally, this has
entailed that the presidency of the Council of the European
Union takes on the role as lead negotiator, with support from
the Commission.83 A system of issue leaders has also been
utilised, where Member States with more resources or stronger
interest can take the lead on a particular issue.84 Throughout
the negotiation cycle, the EU and its Member States are
jointly present in the UNFCCC process, and internal
coordination is done through Council working groups, notably
the Working Party on International Environmental Issues
(WPIEI), on a continuous basis. Throughout the UNFCCC
negotiation cycle, it is this working group that issues
mandates, receives briefings on preparatory negotiations, and80 European Union, Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), Official Journal of the European Union, 1992/C/191/1, 7 February 1992.81 European Union, op. cit., Treaty of Lisbon, art. 4(1)(e).82 T. Delreux, Op. Cit., The EU as as an international climate negotiator, pp. 76-77.83 Ibid, p. 74-79.84 T. Delreux, op. cit., The EU as International Climate Negotiator, p. 114.
39
issues positions, yet little literature exists on its
functioning and effectiveness. It is also here that third
party positions would most likely have to be absorbed,
reflected on and reacted upon, but investigation of the WPIEI
is often contextualised in processes85, and this has not been
done in the context of third parties. This is where the first
hand sources in this thesis may contribute positively.
This institutional configuration produces clear problems
and limitations. First, practical arrangements have had very
varied results in their implementation, and undermines
continuity in EU representation at the UNFCCC.86 As will be
discussed later in the study, it is argued that the
arrangements ahead of Copenhagen led to the failure of the EU
negotiating position. Second, the division of competences
leads to questions about authority. While the presidency
ostensibly represents the EU, any negotiations moving outside
of the EU’s agreed position have to be discussed internally by
the Member States, forcing the EU bloc to retreat from the
negotiation floor87. If contingency planning has not taken
place, this can paralyse the EU for the greater part of
negotiations. As will be discussed later, this may also give
rise to a specific “Europe problem” if conferences are held
where European leaders can easily attend, given that this
muddles authority structures and by bringing up negotiations
85 See T. Delreux & K. Van Den Brande, op. cit., p. 119-121 for adiscussion of the WPIEI in the context of issue leaders.86 Ibid, p. 126.87 T. Delreux, “The EU and multilateralism in the environmentalfield : UNEP reform and external representation in environmentalnegations” in E. Drieskens & L. Van Schaik (eds.), The EU and EffectiveMultilateralism: Internal and external reform practices, London, 2014, p. 76.
40
to the head of state level, excluding the EU presidency.
Third, the issue leader system creates significant
coordination issues, as COP working groups may be organised on
an informal basis, which then requires EU negotiators to
redistribute their own resources while keeping the presidency
informed of the overall progress of negotiations.88 Fourth,
while Member States seek to retain their own authority
wherever they retain competence, they may not possess the
expertise required to engage with a policy area.89 In
particular smaller Member States (or states less invested in
the negotiations) may be left to take a decision on internal
EU coordination without being able to appropriately grasp the
issue, while not trusting experts of other Member States.
Finally, an issue less often discussed is the ability of
the EU to function as a bloc during preparatory meetings, and
which informal practices apply.90 Previous research indicates
that the Commission (now DG CLIMA) has gained an increasing
role during these meetings as they are often of a more
technical nature and a lower priority for Member States,91
which may be why Commission officials were expecting a
positive outcome ahead of COP 15. Yet the question as to how
progress during preparatory meetings is communicated and
sanctioned by the Member States, and fully absorbed by the
entire EU bloc ahead of COP meetings remains unclear, and has
88 T. Delreux & K. Van den Brande, Op. Cit., p. 116.89 Ibid, p. 115.90 Ibid, p. 115.91 P. M. Barnes, “The role of the Commission of the European Union:creating external coherence from internal diversity”, The EuropeanUnion as a Leader in International Climate Change Politics, R. K. W.W Wurzel & J.Connelly (eds.), New York, Routledge, 2011, Pp. 55-56.
41
not been well explored in the literature. It is possible that
it is within this process that absorption of and reaction to
third party positions plays a central role, and where there
may be an institutional failure in appropriately adjusting
negotiation strategy towards third actors.
What these factors suggest is that there may be obstacles
for the EU partially to absorb and communicate information
from third parties, but also primarily to adjust its
negotiation position in a changing context. What also quickly
becomes evident is that literature focusing on the EU’s role
in climate negotiations remains detached from the studies of
international regimes that have been discussed in the first
chapter, as well as institutional studies of the UNFCCC. Our
understanding of the EU as a climate negotiator could thus be
improved by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, where
notions of EU actorness and its performance in climate
negotiations are contrasted with regime modelling and the
previously discussed regression analyses of the climate issue.
In order to examine how the aspects discussed in this
chapter influence the EU’s performance in climate
negotiations, we will now turn our attention to the 2009
Copenhagen COP 15, and then proceed to assess what lessons
were drawn from that conference ahead of COP 21 in Paris
before moving on to analysing interviews with practitioners.
42
3 A Copenhagen paradigm shift? the EU at COP 15 and beyond
3.1 The EU at the 2009 Copenhagen COP 15 and its inter-sessional meetings
The 2009 Copenhagen COP 15 was arguably exceptional in the
level of effort and expectations raised by the EU. In March
2007, the EU took initiative in being the first party to
present concrete reduction targets for a post-Kyoto agreement,
which was followed by the 2008 20-20-20 package, setting out
targets for renewables and decarbonisation towards 2020.92 This
can be understood as a form of directional leadership, where
EU policy makers were to an extent hedging their own climate
strategy on being able to deliver an agreement at Copenhagen.93
In the communication “20 20 by 2020 – Europe’s Climate Change
Opportunity”, where the 20-20-20 targets were introduced, the
Commission stresses that:
“The EU must do everything possible to promote a
comprehensive international agreement to cut greenhouse
emissions. The proposals are conceived to show that the
Union is ready to take further action as part of an
international agreement, stepping up from the 20% minimum
target for greenhouse gas reductions to a more ambitious
30% reduction.”94
The communication as such makes clear that the 20-20-20
targets were delivered with the hope that an international92 C. F. Parker & C. Karlsson, Op. Cit., p. 924.93 Ibid, p. 926.94 European Commission, Op. Cit., “20 20 by 2020”, p. 5.
43
climate agreement would be reached at Copenhagen. This was
further made clear by the Council conclusions of November
2009, which stressed the need for a “legally binding
instrument”, with a “strong and effective compliance regime”.95
Notably, the proposed enhanced target of 30% was intended to
function as a carrot, indicating an assumption that other
parties could be incentivised to go further than an initial
agreement and take on more stringent commitments. Radoslav S.
Dimitrov, in interviews with EU negotiators, found that four
scenarios were being considered internally: first, a legal
treaty; second, a “comprehensive core decision”; third, a
political declaration; or fourth, no output whatsoever.96
According to Dimitrov, the negotiators reflect that the last
option was not considered a real possibility.
2009 was however a complicated moment for the EU to act, as
the Lisbon treaty was to enter into force on December 1, less
than a week before Copenhagen. It was decided to employ the
troika system as in the past, where the EU presidency formally
serves as the “spokesperson, main contact point, main
negotiator and representative of the EU [...] and is
responsible for the EU’s internal management and
coordination”,97 and the incoming presidency and commission (DG
ENVI) take a supporting role. Here, we may argue that the EU
faces a specific problem when a UNFCCC conference is hosted
95 Council of the European Union, ”Council Conclusions on EUposition for the Copenhagen Climate Conference”, 2968th EnvironmentCouncil meeting, Luxembourg, 21 October 2009, p. 13.96 R. S. Dimitrov, “Inside Copenhagen: The State of ClimateGovernance”, Global Environmental Politics vol. 10, no. 2, 2010, p. 19.97 P. M. Kaczynski, “Single Voice, Single Chair? How to re-organisethe EU in international negotiations under the Lisbon rules”, CEPSPolicy Brief no. 207, CEPS, p. 12.
44
within the EU. The Danish COP presidency had to take on the
impartial character of that function, while at the same time
engaging with the EU’s own approach to the conference. This
creates a friction during sessions where the EU COP presidency
is tasked with bringing negotiations forward, while the EU
presidency is doing the same with its own interests in mind.
It could further be argued that the EU presidency is a source
of incontinuity in climate negotiations, as the six-month
period from July to December only covers half a negotiating
cycle. The Swedish presidency at COP 15 was the last
presidency in a trio98 including France and the Czech Republic
(often an opponent to ambitious climate action), and only
formally began its work during the preceding summer. While the
Swedish government has traditionally adopted an ambitious
climate strategy, Kaczynski99 also highlights its limited
resources for the functions of the EU presidency, which
equally were factors for the Danish COP presidency.
COP 15 saw five preparatory (inter-sessional) meetings,
three in Bonn, one in Bangkok and one in Barcelona.100 In
addition, several informal meetings were organised at a
bilateral and multilateral level between the EU, its Member
States and third parties. An often overlooked fact during
these meetings is that the Commission, along with the
presidency, did accurately identify that Copenhagen would not
produce their expected outcome, albeit late in the process. In
November, president Barroso markedly attempted to lower
98 EU presidencies are organised into groups of three, in an attemptto create some continuity between the positions.99 P. M. Kaczynski, op. cit., p. 2.100 UNFCCC, ”Meetings”, UNFCCC website.
45
expectations by stating, “of course we are not going to have a
full-fledged binding treaty by Copenhagen. There is no time
for that.”101 This statement coincided closely with signals
from the US government that no treaty could be reached,102
signalling that this had been made clear during the
preparatory meeting in Barcelona, only a month before COP 15.
The question that we are ultimately left with upon observing
the preparatory process is whether the failure to build
support among third parties can be attributed to the EU, or to
the general political environment of the negotiations. We will
explore this further in the following section.
3.2 Outcome of COP 15
A key aspect of the image of Copenhagen as a failure for
the EU is that the Copenhagen Accord was developed largely
without the engagement of the EU.103 While the accord is far
from a new agreement, it nevertheless included some successes.
Notably, the 2°C target was recognised, paving the way for its
official adoption.104 It further established the Green Climate
Fund (GCF) for climate finance, and created agreement on
developing nations having to undertake some form of mitigation
action, further breaking down the firewall between Annex 1 and
non-Annex 1 parties.105 In retrospect, the Accord thus laid the
101 A. Stratton, “Hopes fading for Copenhagen climate change treaty,says Ed Milliband”, The Guardian, 5 November 2009. 102 S. Goldenberg & J. Vidal, “US scales down hopes of global climatechange treaty in Copenhagen”, The Guardian, 4 November 2009.103 R. S. Dimitrov, op. cit., pp. 21-22.104 UNFCCC, “Copenhagen Accord”, Journal of the United Nations,FCCC/CP/2009/11/add.1, Copenhagen, 19 December 2009, p. 5.105 Ibid, P. 6-7.
46
foundations for valuable progress,106 and it can be argued that
this facilitated the adaptation of the Durban Platform at a
later stage.
At the time however, this progress was far from what was
hoped for. Politically, several actors have identified
Copenhagen as a failure. The Swedish presidency called the
outcome a “great failure”, “clearly below [the EU’s original]…
objective”.107 Joseph Curtin has placed the blame for this
squarely on the EU, calling the conference a “failure of EU
diplomacy”.108 Several factors have been attributed to this
failure, including:
1. Poor cohesion: EU Member States diverged on several
issue, which resulted in a weak mandate and forced them
to dedicate an excessive amount of time to internal
negotiation.109
2. Lack of flexibility: because of disagreements, the
presidency was unable to react to third party actions,
and consequently allowed for rivalling coalitions to
form.
3. Poor regime design: the EU’s proposal for an increase
of its own commitments was made redundant by agreements
106 C. Egenhofer & A. Georgiev, “Why the transatlantic climate changepartnership matters more than ever”, CEPS Commentary, CEPS, Brussels,10 January 2010, pp. 1-2.107 Swedish Presidency, Press conference at COP 15 with Fredrik Reinfeldt and JoséManuel Barroso, December 19 2009.108 J. Curtin, ”The Copenhagen Conference: How Should the EUrespond?”, Institute of International and European Affairs, Dublin, January2010, p. 8.109 C. Damro, ”EU-UN Environmental Relations: Shared Competence andEffective Multilateralism”, K. Verlin Laatikainen & Karen. E. Smith(eds.), Intersecting Multilateralisms: The European Union at the United Nations,London, Palgrave, 2006, p. 186.
47
over any form of targets. The emphasis on a legally
binding agreement was also a continuous sticking point.
These three factors may all contribute to why EU engagement
with third parties failed to produce enough support for an
agreement, but these still remain very much at the macro
level. What the literature up to this point has not adequately
investigated is how continuous coordination has affected
relations with third parties, in particular within the WPIEI.
A possible explanation for why this is the case is that a high
degree of confidentiality applies during Council working party
meetings. The only work drawing from direct observation of the
WPIEI that has been reviewed for this study is that of Delreux
and Van den Brande, and in that case as a part of a Member
State delegation.110 Another issue of concern is that there is
a tendency to qualify the EU’s performance on the basis of
what it deems as an ideal outcome in a climate negotiation,
and what outcome is ultimately produced. Delreux employs this
approach in his 2014 study, judging the 2009 Copenhagen
conference to be a “major step backwards for the EU’s climate
effectiveness”.111 This form of analysis retains a blind side
towards the more intricate nature how political conditions can
shape negotiation outcomes, a perspective that regime studies
may be better suited to achieve. As Delreux himself
recognises, the highly politicized nature of Copenhagen as
well as the detrimental international context played a key
role for its outcome, but that he then concludes this to be a
110 T. Delreux & K. Van Den Brande, op. cit., p. 119-121.111 T. Delreux, “EU actorness, cohesiveness and effectiveness inenvironmental affairs”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 21, no.7, 2014, p. 1027.
48
determinant of the EU’s own effectiveness, rather than the
negotiation process as a whole, suggests that goal attainment
remains the determinant qualifier.112 Within regime theory
meanwhile, game theory would suggest that climate negotiations
are games with multiple equilibria, meaning that an actor can
function coherently and deliver strong results in building
majority coalitions, but a consensus-based system will require
a tremendous degree of convergence for any agreement to be
reached.113 Within that context, it may be worth noting that
actors other than the EU are also pursuing an agreement, and
the UNFCCC as a regime offers significant obstacles even to
conventional unitary actors.
An additional question exists as to whether a qualifier of
the EU’s objectives as being realistic is beneficial or not.
An understanding of this certainly affects a goals-based
assessment. In our earlier discussion about drivers for EU
actorness, we noted that several authors identify a normative
commitment as a key driver for the EU’s international climate
action. It may be hasty to assume that objectives based on
normative commitments could easily be subjected to a goals-
112 Ibid, p. 1027.113 S. Barrett, op. cit., Environment and Statecraft, pp. 85-05.
Figure 5 Schematic of model for assessing impact at Copenhagen by Eppstein
49
based evaluation of its performance, if this goes beyond what
may be acceptable for the UNFCCC parties in the first place.
Given the EU’s commitment to the multilateral process and
reaching an agreement, there is a wide spectrum of outcomes
between its ambitions and what it will deem an acceptable
agreement.
Another example of this is the model that Eppstein et al.
use to illustrate the outcome of Copenhagen from the EU
perspective, based on Putnam’s two level games theory.114 They
argue that due to a weak internal mandate and a range of
conflicting statements at the intra-European level, and an
unfavourable political environment at the international level,
it is possible to conclude that the EU had a low impact on the
outcome.115 While this model has some explanatory power, its
binary conceptualisation of the political environment does not
accurately capture the potential for different outcomes at
Copenhagen, as the question remains as to whether conditions
were unfavourable for any agreement, or primarily the EU’s
proposed model. Clearly, some progress was possible, given
what we now know about the Accord. Again, regime studies may
provide another piece to the puzzle.
3.3 From Copenhagen to Paris: a new paradigm in EU climate negotiations?
In 2010, the US special envoy for climate change, Todd
Stern, suggested that Copenhagen was leading the way towards a114 R. D. Putnam, ”Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games”, International Organisation, vol. 42, no. 3, 1988, pp. 427-460.115 G. Eppstein et al., The EU’s Impact on International Climate ChangeNegotiations: the Case of Copenhagen, DSEU, Loughborough, LoughboroughUniversity, 2010, P. 15.
Figure 5 Schematic of model for assessing impact at Copenhagen by Eppstein
50
new paradigm in climate diplomacy, which he called a “global
deal”.116 A similar sentiment has been echoed in an article by
Falkner et al., who argue that the post-Copenhagen climate
regime is moving towards a building-blocks approach, a process
“already evident in the pre- and post-Copenhagen process”.117 A
question that emerges then is whether the EU’s approach to
climate negotiations after Copenhagen would embody a new
paradigm in its own efforts to develop the climate regime.
First, we must define the notion of a paradigm. This study
applies Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of a paradigm as “a
framework of concepts, results, and procedures within which
subsequent work is structured.”118 What is thus meant by a new
paradigm in the EU’s approach to climate negotiations is a
significant shift in its guiding logic.
Falkner et al., as well as other authors, have argued that
the post-Copenhagen era represents a new paradigm also in EU
climate policy, where emphasis on top-down measures, including
ambitious, binding reduction commitments, are being abandoned
in favour of a bottom-up approach based on voluntary
contributions and local or regional cooperation. This approach
is aimed at extracting a credible agreement, which may serve
as the basis for more ambitious action in the future. Yet the
dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up regime formation does
not accurately capture the current EU strategy, which could
best be described as drawing elements from both forms. Ahead
116 T. Stern, ”A New Paradigm: Climate Change Negotiations in hePost-Copenhagen Era”, remarks delivered ain Ann Arbor, MI, 8October 2010.117 Falkner et al., op. cit., p. 259.118 T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, London, University of Chicago Press Ltd., 1962, p. 10.
51
of Paris, the EU has continued to emphasise the need for a
legally binding agreement, even proposing a “new body” to
“facilitate implementation and address questions that are
raised over compliance with regard to the implementation of
any Party’s monitoring, reporting, verification and
accounting”.119 That 80% of global emissions should be covered
by contracting parties also suggests that the EU is pursuing a
global top-down agreement to set the rules for climate
mitigation for all parties.
In their 2010 article, Falkner et al. describe the approach
to negotiations up to this point as a “global deal strategy”,
and argue that this approach “from Rio (1992) to Kyoto (1997)
and beyond” is yielding increasingly diminished returns. 120 As
an alternative, they propose a ”building blocks” approach,
relying on incremental progress by developing “different
elements of climate governance”.121 This, Falkner et al. argue,
remains a second best scenario, but offers hope in proceeding
with climate negotiations and is in fact already playing out
in the post-Copenhagen era.122 While this analysis does more to
build our understanding of a bottom-up momentum in the post-
Copenhagen era, Falkner et al. may be overstating their case.
They bring up the example of independent progress on the
instrument for reducing emissions from deforestation and
forest degradation (REDD), as well as the reluctance
demonstrated by the United States (US) and China in taking on
119 European Commission, “The Paris Protocol – a blueprint fortackling global climate change beyond 2020”, COM(2015) 81 final,Brussels, 25 February 2015, p. 9.120 Falkner et al., op. cit, p. 253.121 Falkner et a., op. cit., p. 252.122 Ibid., p. 260.
52
a binding framework. If we examine these two points however,
we find that nature of these factors is far from
straightforward.
First, it is true that REDD negotiations have been carried
out at a relatively fast pace, notably through the opening up
of demonstration activities following COP 13 in 2007, as well
as the inclusion of a (+) to indicate the inclusion of carbon
stock concerns.123 Yet UNFCCC guidance on REDD+ has
historically been scarce, and overall financial support and
action remained low until COP 19 linked its activity to the
activities of the GCF.124 Given existing reservations about GCF
funding, as well as the close link between climate finance and
expectations ahead of Paris,125 it may be hasty to hold up
REDD+ as incremental progress without a global deal. Instead,
this may equally be described as part of the negotiation
process for a top-down agreement.
Second, American and Chinese hesitance towards a binding
framework is indeed an obstacle to a global deal, in
particular when the EU’s emphasis on a legally binding
agreement is taken into account. However, it must be noted
that American and Chinese opposition is not directed expressly
at any form of top-down agreement, but rather a strong binding
framework for climate mitigation.126 As the recent agreement
123 UNFCCC, Decision 2/CP.13 (reducing emissions from deforestationin developing countries: approaches to stimulate action), The OfficialJournal of the United Nations, FCCC/CP/2007/6/Add.1, 15 December 2007.124 UNFCCC, Decision 6/CP.19, (Arrangements between the Conference ofthe Parties and the Green Climate Fund), Official Journal of the UnitedNations, FCCC/CP/2013/10.Add.1, 23 November 2013.125 Green Climate Fund, “GCF central to Paris 2015 agreement onClimate Change”, Press Release, Manila, 1 March 2015.
53
between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping indicates,127
there may instead be a potential for a global deal that
provides strategic guidance and facilitates climate finance at
the UN level, but without having targets being legally binding
on parties. This too indicates that a division linking top-
down and bottom-up progress to the prospects of a specific
global agreement may not accurately capture the current state
of climate negotiations.
With regards to third parties, it is clear that the EU has
recognised the shortcomings of its previous approach, and has
put the new institutional tools made available by Copenhagen
into effect for remedying this. The Green Diplomacy Network
(GDN), combined with the Green Diplomacy strategy, are now
jointly overseen by DG CLIMA and the European External Action
Service (EEAS) in an attempt to mainstream EU climate policy
in the diplomatic relations of both the EU and its Member
States.128 Climate diplomacy is now targeted directly at
outreach and building support ahead of COP 21 in Paris,
signalling that third party engagement has gained additional
priority.129 From a regime studies perspective, this approach
should yield results, as it may help to ensure the right level
of participation in an eventual regime.130 The introduction of
Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC’s)126 Z. Zhang, “In what format under what timeframe would China takeon climate commitments? A roadmap to 2050” Nota di lavoro, no. 112,Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2010, P. 14.127 The White house, “U.S.-China Joint Announcement on ClimateChange”, Beijing, China, 12 November 2014128 “EU Green Diplomacy Network”, European External Action Service.129 European External Action Service & European Commission, ”EUclimate diplomacy for 2014 and beyond – reflection paper”, 26 March2013.130 S. Barrett, Op. Cit., Environment and Statecraft, pp. 195-220.
54
following Warsaw131 also establishes a means of creating
predictability of third party positions, as well as
accountability. From the EU perspective, this may be a way of
limiting third party flexibility, thus compensating for the
EU’s own inflexibility. This mechanism corresponds to regime
theoretical discussions of mechanisms for accountability,
which emphasise it as a factor contributing to successful
regime design.132
As a part of the EU’s renewed climate diplomacy, climate
policy is being mainstreamed not only across bilateral
relations, but also across issue areas. This is made clear in
the Council conclusions of June 2013, where mainstreaming of
climate change into “EU and Member States’ priority agendas”
is established as an objective.133 An example of this is the
growing profile of climate policy in the EU’s strategic
partnerships, notably with China.134
What we can thus deduce from an analysis of the post-
Copenhagen era is that negotiations on global climate
governance are moving towards a hybrid structure of renewed
top-down negotiations based on a broader participatory regime,
and with increased emphasis on differentiated action,
accompanied by a bottom-up process where climate action is
becoming mainstreamed across levels and sectors. It is within
131 UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.19 (Further advancing the Durban platform),The Official Journal of the United Nations, FCCC/CP/2013/10/Add.1, Warsaw, 23November 2013.132 S. Barrett, op. cit., Environment and statecraft, p. 139133 Council of the European Union, ”Council Conclusions on EU ClimatePolicy”, Foreign Affairs Council Meeting, Luxembourg, 24 June 2013,p. 3.134European Union and the People’s Republic of China, EU-China Strategic2020 Agenda, Beijing, 21 November 2013, P. 11-13.
55
this environment that the EU operates, and certainly the EU’s
own strategy appears to have adjusted to, and perhaps even
driven, these circumstances. Yet despite that new strategies
are taking form and a broader range of instruments are being
applied, the EU’s principal object remains the same: a legally
binding treaty with a global scope. Therefore, in dealing this
new hybrid negotiation structure the EU’s own approach may not
necessarily represent an entirely new paradigm.
In these two chapters, we have now identified the major
strands of reasoning about the climate change regime, the EU
and third party relations in climate negotiations during and
after Copenhagen, both in the area of regime studies and
European studies. We have also identified a level of
complementarity between these fields, allowing us to suggest
that interdisciplinary research has the potential of improving
our understanding of the EU as a climate actor. Finally, we
have seen that a new paradigm may be evolving in the climate
negotiation process, while the EU’s post-Copenhagen approach
rests on the same objectives, but with a reinforced set of
resources and instruments. With this analysis in mind, we may
proceed to introducing original material gathered through
interviews from policy makers, which we will employ to
contrast the conclusions of this study up to this point.
56
4 Setting the record straight: perspectives from practitioners This chapter introduces a test of the study’s reasoning
about a new paradigm in EU negotiations by contrasting it with
views from practitioners.135 The chapter does so by first
examining perspectives on the Copenhagen conference, and then
the post-Copenhagen paradigm. In order to provide a broad,
nuanced set of perspectives on climate negotiations following
Copenhagen, this section includes interviews with officials
from three stakeholders: DG Climate Action, the Council
Secretariat, and an official with the Swedish presidency at
COP 15 who now remains active with the Swedish government. The
interviewees from the EU institutions agreed to participate on
the condition of anonymity.
4.1 The Copenhagen climate conference
While perspectives of the outcome of Copenhagen varied
somewhat among the sources, the overall conclusion among the
interviewees is that Copenhagen failed to deliver the desired
outcome. Interestingly, there was also a common understanding
that the EU’s own negotiation infrastructure was less of a
decisive factor than the overall political climate at the
conference. Anders Turesson, EU negotiation coordinator for
the Swedish presidency at Copenhagen and now with the climate
unit at the Swedish ministry of environment, argued that:
“of course, we could have done better. It would be very
strange otherwise. But I do not believe that the EU bloc
collapsed, we kept our group together. And if we look at135 See the annex for full transcripts of all interviews undertaken.
57
the entire negotiation process, Sweden and the preceding
presidency succeeded in their primary task.”136
This perspective is further echoed by officials at DG
CLIMA, who argued that that the image of Copenhagen as a
failure cannot be attributed to how the EU works.137 Instead,
the evolution of working practices should be understood in a
long-term perspective, with the breakdown of EU coordination
at COP 6 in The Hague as a decisive moment for the EU’s
current approach to internal organisation.138 A second
commission official suggested that rather than an overall
revision of working practices, the post-Copenhagen strategy
has meant consolidating and reaffirming existing strategies,
by introducing the 2050 roadmap and later the 2030 climate and
energy package.139 An official with the Council secretariat
further suggested that strategic decisions rather than
coordination contributed negatively to the EU’s role at
Copenhagen, notably the formal announcement that the Kyoto
Protocol would be abandoned.140 The official, in some
contradiction with the other sources, also emphasised that a
lack of preparation was a key factor to the outcome at
Copenhagen, but further reasoned that this was primarily a
consequence of relying too much on the UNFCCC’s negotiation
process rather than going beyond that format.
136 Interview with Anders Turesson, in Stockholm, 16 April 2015.137 Interview with anonymous official interview, in Brussels, 22April 2015.138 Ibid. 139 Interview with anonymous Commission official, by phone, 14 April2015.140 Interview with anonymous Council official, in Brussels, 15 April2015.
58
4.1.1 The political environment
Turesson also provided a long-term perspective of climate
negotiations, which allows us to further emphasise the value
of a regime theoretical approach at the macro level. By
contrasting a “golden era of international governance” during
the 1990’s, Turesson suggested that the political environment
in the UNFCCC has moved towards a harsher negotiation climate,
meaning that perceptions of EU action in that environment must
be understood accordingly. As Turesson suggested, the EU can
“lead the horses to the water, but cannot force them to
drink.”141 A Council official expanded on this, suggesting that
while the EU remains inflexible in its position, this occurs
in a context where several parties increasingly do the same.142
These points contribute to our reasoning in two ways.
First, they provide further credibility to applying a regime
theoretical evaluation of EU performance in climate
negotiations, in order to ensure that we can attain a more
nuanced perspective of negotiations dynamics. Second, they
also support our previous argument that evaluating EU
performance with its own objectives as a primary reference may
fail to capture the potential for reaching an agreement with
third parties.
4.1.2 EU influence in the negotiation process
An observation about the negotiation process as a whole may
help us understand the EU’s failure to anticipate the outcome
at Copenhagen early on. As one Commission official noted:
141 Interview with Anders Turesson, 16 April 2015.142 Interview with Council official, 15 April 2015.
59
“We are taken for granted, because we need so much more an
international agreement, and we are keen to uphold the
multilateral process, so people expect that we would be
prepared to make compromise in order to avoid failure.
Obviously, if you are a party who does not care too much
about an agreement, you have much more leverage.”143
This observation is important, because it suggests that the
EU’s ability to influence an outcome diminishes towards the
final stages of the negotiation cycle. Indeed, the official
suggested that the EU’s influence is “to frame the issue,
rather than standing in the way for a final compromise at the
end”, a statement that is further supported in game
theoretical models about players’ interest in achieving an
outcome.144 Building on this, it is thus possible to suggest
that late changes in positions or obstacles to an agreement
are far harder to overcome for the EU, and that this
contributed to the failure of anticipating the difficulty that
reaching an agreement in Copenhagen would entail.
4.1.3 Other actors at Copenhagen
An additional set of observations allow us to once again
emphasise the necessity of examining the role of the COP
presidency for the EU’s approach to climate negotiations. As
virtually all interviewees note, a significant obstacle for
COP 15 was the poor performance of the Danish COP presidency.
Commission officials and Turesson note how the Danish
government was politically pursuing a successful outcome,
leading them to raise expectations continuously. Yet internal
143 Interview with anonymous Commission official, 22 April 2015.144 S. Barrett, op. cit., Environment and Statecraft, pp. 73-75.
60
divisions led to a late change in the negotiation team with
staff from the Prime Minister’s office, who were poorly
prepared and lacked established relationships within the
UNFCCC process. It is thus very important both not to conflate
the EU’s performance with that of the COP presidency, but also
to recognise the additional difficulties created when it is
held by a EU Member State.
4.2 The Copenhagen experience and EU informal arrangements
Turning to the less explored issue of informal arrangement
at Copenhagen and beyond, a key aspect that emerged from the
interviews is the issue of how informal arrangements have
evolved over time. While Turesson emphasised that the EU bloc
had been kept together despite different interests, the
Council official stressed that the EU’s own arrangements only
went so far once the nature of the conference drifted outside
of the conventional negotiation format. As the Council
official described the situation,
“What was wrong in Copenhagen, I think, was to involve
[heads of state] in almost line by line drafting, and that
was after we had realised, or after the Danish COP
presidency had realised, that it was going nowhere, this
agreement that we were going to have, and that we were
working on a declaration, and which heads of state were
drafting line by line. I have never seen such a thing, and
I think the heads of state were surprised to see that.”145
This observation helps us understand how formal
organisation of EU negotiation teams can be rendered
145 Interview with Council Official, 15 April 2015.
61
ineffective by negotiation circumstances, and this is an
aspect that may not be accurately captured in a EU-centred
analysis. These meetings came about through engagement with
non-EU heads of state, and thus constituted an external demand
on the EU’s negotiation structure. They also raise the issue
of the previously mentioned “Europe problem” resulting from
conferences held inside the EU, where stakeholders can easily
access the negotiations. Several interviewees raised this
issue, with a Council official noting that there is already
35,000 participants registered for the Paris COP,146 and it
links closely into an apparent divide between the technical
and political levels of negotiation. One Commission official
nevertheless highlighted that a primary goal of the new
climate diplomacy strategy is to bring the climate agenda into
the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) early on, in order to
coordinate political actors at a much earlier stage in the
process.147
4.2.1 The lack of a negotiation mandate
A key issue with regards to working practices that has
emerged in several interviews, and which is absent in the
reviewed literature, is the fact that no formal negotiation
mandate for the UNFCCC process has ever been proposed by the
Commission and approved by the Council. This opens up for
pragmatism, but also incontinuity. The reasons for this were
described both by Council and Commission officials as a
consequence of political concerns, where the introduction of a
mandate would create intense debate over the nature of the
146 Ibid.147 Interview with Commission official, 14 April 2015.
62
shared competences that climate policy covers. As we will see
in the following section, this remains a point of contention
in the post-Lisbon system. This issue was further expanded on
by a Commission official, who argued that the EU negotiating
team is more of a “ghost team” because of a lack of formal
arrangements, and that some underlying tension remains as to
the nature of the team as being under joint authority of the
Commission and the Council.148 When asked whether arrangements
could be formalised, the official pointed to how transaction
costs would be extremely heavy, as practically establishing
competence would consume time and resources. Our previous
example of head of state engagement suggests that the
pragmatism allowed by the lack of a decision on working
practices can be an obstacle once different authoritative
actors are introduced.
Nevertheless, all interviewees describe informal
arrangements as having been a process of building trust to a
level where the respective EU actors can accept the working
process without formalisation. As identified by both
Commission and Council officials, the WPIEI and internal
coordination sessions have become less focused on competence
and authority, and more on policy substance. While one
Commission official identifies the period immediately after
Copenhagen as “incredibly tough” at the political level, she
also suggested that once policy had been agreed upon and
brought to the technical level, “there is no one shouting
competence here or competence there, who should do this or
that.”149 Another official suggested that while formal148 Interview with Commission official, 22 April 2015.149 Interview with Commission official, 14 April 2015.
63
authority over the EU coordination has not been established,
team working practices function well, albeit with occasional
confusion about responsibilities and competences.
4.2.2 A broadening negotiation process
Another finding of note is that a focus on the UNFCCC
process as the primary mode of conducting climate negotiations
obscures the full extent of activity in this area. A
Commission official stressed how the mainstreaming of climate
change now means that the issue is being negotiated formally
and informally across a vast number of forums, including more
prominent meetings such as the G7/G20 and the Major Economies
forum, as well as the Petersberg climate dialogue, but also
through all bilateral partnership meetings, like the EU-China
summit and the college-to-college meetings with the African
Union.150 Adding to this, interaction takes place in a broad
range of non-governmental forums that parties attend in
different capacities and carry on climate negotiations. This
finding is very much in line with Grundig and Ward’s
conceptualisation of structural power through networks,151
another example of a regime theoretical explanation that may
contribute to our analysis.
4.2.3 Informal arrangements with other actors
An important observation as to informal arrangements made
by several of the interviewees focuses on the relationship
between the actors involved at a conference. As previously
discussed in this study, research of the EU as a climate actor
150 Interview with Commission official, 22 April 2015.151 F. Grundig & H. Ward, op. cit., p. 4.
64
focuses predominantly on the main actors within the EU
negotiation structure, but Anders Turesson, as well as a
source at the Commission, emphasised the role of the UNFCCC
secretariat as a source of authority:
“It is important for the presidency to work closely with
the secretariat, as they have an incredible competence
there. You can get so much good advice, and so much
information there, and also concrete help, concrete
support. My experience is that a presidency has to rely on
the secretariat. I also know that many are worried because
the secretariat is so strong, so there is a worry that the
secretariat can have its own agenda.”152
Turesson’s observations should be contextualised on the
basis that the Swedish presidency, as a smaller state, may
have had to rely more heavily on the secretariat for
resources. Turesson does however consider his observation to
be of a general nature:
“There is always a suspicion, the same way that within the
EU family there are always suspicions against the
Commission. Sometimes well founded, but often in a very
unjust way. They try to be helpful, but it is natural,
they have many very skilled people, and it is very hard
for the rotating presidency to match this incredibly
professional organisation. And the same applies to
relations between the rotating presidencies under the
climate convention and the climate secretariat. At some
152 Interview with anonymous Commission official, 22 April 2015.
65
point it has to be accepted and embraced that there is a
skilled climate secretariat.”153
While some literature exists on the role of the UNFCCC
secretariat, notably in the previously discussed works by
Farhana and Yamin as well as Scott Barrett, it is
conspicuously absent in studies focusing on the EU’s
performance in climate negotiations. Given that first hand
sources for this study emphasise its role for the presidency
as well as the conference as a whole, an important finding is
thus that observers should better explore the EU’s engagement
with the secretariat. Turesson’s observation is also
interesting in that he highlights the importance of the EU
presidency in ensuring ownership and building trust for the EU
negotiation positions, something that the Commission as an
institutional actor is not suited to do given the inherent
tension of a principal-agent relationship.154
A similar point emerges in discussions about the COP
presidency. EU Member States participating in the EU
negotiation team while simultaneously organising the
conference face a specific set of challenges related to COP
presidency impartiality and interest management within the EU.
As a Commission official suggested, this is less of an issue
when a Member State’s own interests are closely aligned with
the EU position, but as in the example of the Polish COP
presidencies in Poznan and Warsaw, a high degree of effort is
required to both influence the EU negotiating line and manage
impartiality.155 One official also identified a learning
153 Interview with Anders Turesson, 16 April 2015.154 Ibid.155 Interview with Commission official, 22 April 2015.
66
process within the COP presidency as an institution,
reflecting on how the Mexican COP presidency at the subsequent
COP 16 in Cancun drew from the Danish experience to avoid
similar problems. There may thus be an evolutionary process
within the COP presidency as an institution, which would be
another influencing factor in the UNFCCC process. Again, this
is an issue less explored in the literature that could benefit
from further investigation.
4.3 The post-Copenhagen paradigm
Interviewees were also questioned about the idea of a new
paradigm in climate negotiations, and what this entailed from
a EU perspective. An important finding from the interviews up
until now is that the post-Copenhagen climate process does not
necessarily appear to represent an entirely new approach from
the perspective of the EU. As discussed, the EU’s approach has
rather been to consolidate existing working practices and
complement them with new instruments made available through
the Lisbon treaty. The most substantial change in the
organisation of the negotiation team, as highlighted by a
Commission official, is the introduction of issue leaders on a
semi-permanent basis, who are part of a team carried over
between EU presidencies.156 Yet all the interviewees identify
the formal objective of the climate process to be a legally
binding agreement with broad coverage, suggesting that the
main principles have stayed in place. An interesting
observation is that officials from two institutions and one
Member State all conclude that while this goal remains the
formal negotiation line, unofficially the EU’s own negotiation156 Ibid.
67
arrangements and their international context mean that
ultimately, it may have to settle for any comprehensive deal
where agreement can be found. As previously mentioned, a
Commission official suggested that “we are keen to uphold the
multilateral process, so people expect that we would be
prepared to make compromise to avoid failure”.157 This would
nevertheless suggest that the EU’s objectives before and after
Copenhagen have remained similar. It is rather at the level of
strategic approaches to attaining these objectives that some
change has taken place. As Commission officials suggest, the
EU remains weak in interacting with third parties, in
particular with regards to engaging with alternative proposals
put forward during conferences. But in interviews they also
describe a full-fledged strategic approach to a range of
actors, where previous approaches such as mainstreaming have
matured, and new post-Lisbon instruments such as the green
diplomacy network and the EEAS’ functions have contributed to
developing an overarching negotiation strategy with continuous
formal and informal engagement, with the purpose of building a
broad coalition. An interesting observation by an official is
that ahead of Paris COP 21, the COP presidency indirectly
plays a positive role for the EU negotiating position as the
French government has focused its efforts on “outlier” parties
that may not be amenable to any agreement.158 Here, we can
further emphasise the under-explored role of the COP
presidency for the EU’s negotiating role, as its interests can
align with the EU’s without violating its impartiality, in
157 Ibid. 158 Ibid.
68
that it also pursues an agreement as a positive outcome of a
conference.
These observations thus give us a mixed image, very much in
line with the conclusions presented in the fourth chapter. It
would appear as if the core principles of the EU’s approach to
climate negotiations remain fixed, but strategic approaches
and competence to promote them have grown over time,
suggesting a paradigm shift based more on strategy and
instruments rather than objectives. Further, a range of
factors that are less dealt with in the literature have been
identified as playing a significant role for the EU’s role in
international climate negotiations.
Having now brought forwards a range of perspectives to
contrast our initial analysis, we may move on to a final
consolidation of findings in the next chapter before bringing
the study to a close.
69
5 Challenging our understanding: The EU as a climate actor and the post-Copenhagen paradigm revisitedHaving reviewed the perspectives of practitioners, several
important points for how we understand EU climate negotiations
have emerged. First, we find that the reviewed approaches to
evaluating the EU’s performance as a climate actor either fail
to take into account or use overly simplistic analyses of the
prospects of developing a climate regime at a given time. The
goals based evaluation discussed in the fourth chapter has
resulted in conclusions in academia about EU effectiveness
that are remembered and described in far more nuanced terms by
practitioners. This highlights that there is a clear silo
mentality between the fields of regime theory and European
Union studies, despite that the fact that these can provide a
high degree of complimentarity. As has been demonstrated,
regime theory helps to contextualise evaluation of EU
performance in climate negotiations, notably by providing a
more complex analysis of the prospects of an agreement during
conferences. Conversely, European Union studies help break the
black box thinking in regime studies often present when
discussing the EU. Throughout this study, an interdisciplinary
approach drawing from both fields has created added value for
the analysis, and it could as such be concluded that such an
approach may benefit our understanding of the EU as a climate
negotiator in future research.
Second, interviews also revealed the importance of actors
only partially discussed in regime theory, and barely at all
70
in European Union studies. Notably, the UNFCCC secretariat was
highlighted by several interviewees as being a key actor,
given its knowledge capital and authority in conferences, as
well as ability to facilitate progress in the negotiation
process. The secretariat’s role should thus be further
explored in future studies, in order to improve our
understanding of interactions in climate negotiations. The
issue of informal arrangements during negotiations has also
been brought up as a subject needing further investigation by
the literature. Adding to this, the complexity facing a EU
Member State also holding the COP presidency during
negotiations is often overlooked, and the findings of this
study suggest that this is an influential factor for EU
coordination dynamics.
Third, the results of the interviews make clear that given
the lack of a formal mandate for climate negotiations and the
more pragmatic approach that this allows, it is unhelpful to
focus primarily on the formal division of competences and
institutional organisation of the EU in order to properly
understand how EU internal coordination is now organised. As
suggested by several interviewees, ahead of COP 21 in Paris,
it would appear that the French government is absorbing
several functions previously managed by the EU presidency, and
that a more pragmatic burden sharing with smaller Member
States holding the presidency is developing. Further, the
informal approach to organisations leaves several issues
unsettled, notably the competence of the Commission in jointly
organising the EU’s negotiation team.
71
Fourth, the expanding range of forums where EU climate
action plays out alongside the larger number of key actors
identified by practitioners suggests that the literature
reviewed for this study focuses on only a limited part of the
EU’s role in climate negotiations. This is an issue that may
impede how future research contributes to analysis of the
field, unless this is mitigated. As identified, a macro
perspective on networks exists in the field of regime theory,
suggesting that research directed at addressing this issue
could benefit from the application of methodology drawn from
that field.
Finally, The interviews also highlighted the issue of a
broadening negotiation process, spanning across a multitude of
points of interaction and involving a broader range of actors.
As suggested in the previous chapter, regime theoretical
theory has engaged with analysis of structural power exercised
through networks, notably in the studies of Grundig and Ward.
It could be reasoned that there therefore is a growing utility
in drawing on similar statistical modelling in order to engage
with larger, more complex sets of interactions that
qualitative analysis is too limited in its methodology to
capture.
5.1 A post-Copenhagen paradigm or an enhanced negotiation approach?
Finally, on the issue of whether the post-Copenhagen era of
climate negotiations represents a new paradigm for the EU,
what we have found is that this is partly the case. Both the
literature and interviews identify the post-Copenhagen era as
a new paradigm, with a mix of top-down and bottom-up
72
approaches to developing a climate regime being employed.
Interviews further revealed that Copenhagen is considered a
key point in the climate process by all the officials
interviewed, but not necessarily for the EU’s own working
practices, which adds further credibility to its influence on
a new paradigm in climate negotiations but not for the EU as a
climate actor. However, it is worth noting that many of the
new instruments that have been developed to put the new
approach into effect are only made possible by the Lisbon
reforms, notably the EEAS’ role in climate diplomacy and the
expanded role of the Commission, and as such there is a
convergence where it is hard to attribute different factors to
the post-Copenhagen and post-Lisbon period of negotiations.
Further, as has been made clear, the EU still pursues a
legally binding agreement with broad coverage, just as it did
ahead of Copenhagen. It is thus possible to conclude that
Copenhagen has provided an impetus towards expanding and
reconsolidating the EU’s own institutional organisation, while
the Lisbon treaty has provided the technical basis for putting
this approach into effect. As has been highlighted by the
interviews, the internal working practices of the EU have
employed roughly the same practices with only some
modifications, albeit perhaps with more confidence. Yet the
political understanding of how to develop the climate regime
has remained similar, though its objectives have been
contextualised not by significant internal change, but by an
evolving political environment. Thus, the nature of a post-
2009 paradigm in EU negotiations is rather a combination of
73
internal consolidation and adaption of entrenched objectives
to the context of an evolving international setting.
74
6 Conclusion
To bring this study to a close, we may now reintroduce the
questions presented at its beginning, and then proceed to
highlight other findings of note for the field, as well as
sources for further investigation.
First, As observed in the third chapter and further
discussed during interviews, EU negotiators did grow
increasingly aware of opposition to their strategy ahead of
Copenhagen. This largely took place after preparatory
meetings, suggesting that developments there were indeed
absorbed by the EU’s institutional structure. We further find
that practitioners, who nevertheless nuance this in the
context of a negotiation environment where inflexibility is
common practice among the parties, support the literature’s
observation of EU inflexibility in its position. Their
observations also indicate that the EU’s approach through the
UNFCCC negotiation process has to remain long-term and rely on
framing, as the its fixed position and strong interest in
reaching an agreement through the multilateral process leaves
it less able to significantly influence the outcome of the
process towards its final phase.
This also helps to explain why expectations ahead of
Copenhagen were continuously being raised. First, Commission
officials signalled late in the process that expectations must
be lowered, as did other Member States. However, the overlap
of EU membership and conference organisation represented by
the Danish COP presidency created difficulty in managing
75
expectations; the COP presidency in its own role had to
maintain an attitude of being able to deliver results in
Copenhagen, while its messages became conflated with the
overall EU position. At the same time, as interviews indicate,
the late change of the Danish conference team may also have
contributed to poor management of the Conference. Adding to
this, the resources of Denmark, as a smaller Member State,
were stretched thin during the conference, leading to
expectations being poorly managed at home, given the Prime
Minister’s direct involvement, as well as abroad, where the
responsibility for overall communication was poorly defined
between the Commission, the Swedish EU presidency and the
Danish COP presidency, and EU Member States at large, in line
with the lack of a decision on working practices.
With regards to the notion of a new paradigm in EU climate
negotiations, we have seen that this is not necessarily the
case. The discussion in this study has certainly indicated
that a measure of change is occurring at the international
level, and that the EU, equipped with new instruments and
competence following the Lisbon treaty, has reacted to these
changes with a range of new strategies and approaches. Yet it
cannot be disputed that the principal objectives remain the
same. The EU is still the primary promoter of a global,
legally binding agreement with ambitious reduction targets,
and this entails that many of the issues that have been key
points of conflict still are very much relevant. What this
tells us is that even with the far greater range of resources
and instruments that are now available to the EU ahead of
76
Paris, there is no guarantee that an agreement will be
delivered as conceived by EU stakeholders.
Apart from these answers to the questions first introduced,
the study has also yielded some important observations about
how scholars approach the EU as a climate actor. The
application of regime theoretical perspectives throughout the
study has revealed aspects often overlooked in European Union
studies, notably the use goals-based approaches in evaluating
EU effectiveness. Interviews also reveal the far broader range
of actors and forums now involved in EU climate action,
creating a need to better map out the full extent of areas
where the EU operates as a climate actor, and how it does so.
Notably, the influence of the COP presidency and the UNFCCC
secretariat, and how these interact with the EU negotiation
system could be subject to further investigation. Further, the
absence of a decision establishing working practices and the
consequences this has for informal working arrangements is
also a point of interest, in particular if it can be
contextualised with similar situations in other parts of the
EU system. In order to ensure that the scope of research for
EU climate action remains relevant, further research is
required to ensure that these aspects are taken into account.
To formally conclude, while this study has provided some
answers for its initial line of questioning, it has also
opened several doors for further research. It is the hope of
the author that this will both contribute to contextualising
our understanding of the EU as a climate actor, and also to
how we can improve our methodology for examining the EU’s role
77
in climate negotiations by engaging with fields not primarily
associated with the European Union.
78
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91
ANNEX I: Transcript of Interview with Anders TuressonInterview conducted in Stockholm, 16 April 2015. Translated
from its original language.
If I could begin by asking you to reflect a bit on the
preparatory meetings leading up to Copenhagen, the outcome of
COP 15, and how that outcome has affected approaches to
climate negotiations since, that would very much be
appreciated.
Copenhagen was the end of a very long process, which
actually begun, if we look at it within the bigger picture, it
actually began with the Rio de Janeiro Convention, when the
climate convention was planned. But also more concretely with
Kyoto, as it was necessary to develop practical rules to make
it possible to implement the Kyoto protocol, and also to make
it rafiable. This was an extraordinarily long process, which
formally ended in Marrakech, completed in 2001, and then
continued for a long time up until we had the Kyoto protocol
ratified. That was 2005, I think. But even then, that is to
say when we entered the 21st century, we realised that the
final date of 2012, the final date for the first commitment
period, was drawing close. And with hindsight, from the first
negotiation, from round and signature of the climate
convention to the entry into force of the Kyoto protocol in
2005, with this experience we understood that this will take a
lot of time before we would reach an agreement on the second
93
commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, and perhaps even
something beyond that. So what then happened from 2005 onwards
was that the EU pushed the issue of a need for a new
negotiation round with the purpose of reaching a new agreement
before 2012, exactly for the period after 2012. And this
started very carefully. The parties were very unwilling to
discuss the future, and very suspicious.
And we could also state that there has been a gradual
development, sadly, but the 1990’s were, to say in a
reflective view, a golden decade for this type of
international governance. There was the view that it was
possible to achieve far-reaching governance at an
international level in certain areas, such as the climate
area. To even be able to think that the Kyoto protocol became
an expression of this, one of the best expressions for exactly
this thinking, was the consequence of the end of the cold war.
We looked ahead and believed that we would be able to build an
international regime with a binding international legal order,
that everyone would be able to submit themselves to. So with
Kyoto followed an entire international system, with which we
still work, but the mandate is quite limited as pretty few
countries are subject to it. But there was the establishment
of a compliance committee that was to take decisions on
penalties and the like. Today these forms of thinking appear
quite visionary. We have gone backwards. These types of legal
orders are not on the agenda today. And it can only be stated
that it’s deeply regrettable, others and I feel, that the
international situation has worsened, and that we’re back in
this situation, and that there are countries who are pulling
94
away from this thought that they will not surrender
sovereignty to achieve this kind of public good. So it was a
very special situation that led to this negotiation round. And
when we introduced the thought of beginning a new round, this
was done in an environment that was characterised by worsening
international relations. We could see that even then, back in
2005.
Anyway, the EU kept up the pressure, and over time we
made some gains during some meetings, where Montreal was
probably the first, where the parties agreed to discuss a new
agreement, albeit in free and unregulated forms as to what
could happen after 2020. Then we arrived at Bali, 2007, where
we got a, what did we call it, a form of mandate although it
wasn’t, but it was a sort of roadmap for arriving at a new
agreement two years later in Copenhagen, 2009. So 2007 in Bali
there was an agreement on the framework of an agreement that
was to be concluded in Copenhagen. There is a lot to tell
about this, obviously, it was two very intense years. And what
characterised this entire process was that the EU was the
driving party, the only party who really wanted a new
agreement after the 2020’s. The EU and industrialised
countries were very keen on breaking this division between
industrialised and developing countries, because what
characterises the Kyoto regime is a strongly marked firewall
with very different rules systems for the different categories
of countries. The industrialised countries considered this to
be outdated, that in particular China had progressed to become
an economic great power, and was about to become the greatest
emitting country, as it is today. We could see the
95
transformation of the rapidly developing countries, and that
the regime which seemed logical in 1997 when the Kyoto
Protocol was concluded naturally was obsolete 12 years later.
So that is something that also very much affected that
negotiation round.
It was absolutely necessary to bring in the US.
Unfortunately the US did not sign the Kyoto protocol, but the
EU decided to procede down that track regardless, but
eventually there was agreement that after 2012 the US must
participate in the regime, otherwise this was not meaningful,
for a number of reasons. And it’s easy to see why; this is the
superpower, the country that emitted the most. It is also the
country that can influence China, and the country who produces
all the technology. So we must include the US in order for
this to be meaningful.
Then there was the question of which type of regime, and
this became very infected ahead of Copenhagen: the question of
the continuation of the Kyoto protocol. The EU tried to open
this discussion, but it lead to very upset countries,
especially within the collective of developing states, but
also within the EU. So that became an infected discussion that
wasn’t really very well informed, because the EU was actually
interested the entire time in continuing with a Kyoto system.
But there had to be a creation of a system where the US could
also be included, that was what was missing. And this was
misunderstood, I would like to claim, by other parties, and
there was a belief that the EU wanted to leave the Kyoto
system, but this wasn’t at all the case.
96
Something else that signified this negotiation round was
that expectations were raised to enormous proportions, for
better and worse. The problem was that we saw that it was
necessary to have high expectations to have a meeting in
Copenhagen at a very high level if this was to be possible.
And therefore the approach was to raise expectations very
high. But I then think that somewhere on the way, control was
lost over this. It is hard to say; I like to say that
Copenhagen wasn’t a failure. We will get to this when we
discuss the role of Copenhagen for the negotiation process.
Copenhagen can’t be compared with The Hague, for instance,
which became a real collapse. Copenhagen didn’t collapse:
something came out of it, the Copenhagen Accord. And that
wouldn’t have been possible if the highest representatives of
the most powerful countries hadn’t been on the scene. So I
would claim that it was good to raise expectation, but
naturally everyone left disappointed, as everyone walked away
without the agreement that they had hoped for. And naturally
this struck the organising country the worst, the presidency,
namely Denmark. Unfortunately. So in a way Denmark and the
Danish presidency became sacrificial lambs in this game. But
thanks to the presence of presidents and other heads of
governments it was possible to reach the Copenhagen Accord,
and otherwise, and this is my definite opinion, Copenhagen
would have ended the same way as The Hague.
If I can ask a really quick question before you carry on, as
this is something that is not covered in the literature: when
EU negotiations are discussed among scholar, much focus is
97
being placed on the EU presidency. But what I have heard about
Copenhagen onwards, is that the COP presidency weighs in
heavier. The French are very active ahead of Paris, rather
than Luxembourg.
This is naturally the case, because Luxembourg will only,
well I say only, lead the EU. But this was important ahead of
Copenhagen, although perhaps less ahead of Paris: the EU was
the big demandeur. It was the EU that was behind this process,
which should be finalised in Copenhagen. Had it not been for
the EU this process would not have come to be. We wouldn’t
have gotten a meeting a meeting in Copenhagen. It was the EU
who formulated what we were supposed to do in Copenhagen, what
we were supposed to achieve. But it wasn’t meant for the EU to
deliver in Copenhagen, it was China and the US who were
supposed to deliver. And that is an important point, because
often it is claimed in the literature that the EU was pushed
aside, behind the more important actors. That is true, but the
fact is that this was to some extent the intention. The EU had
in some ways done its part before Copenhagen. The horses had
been led to the water so to speak, and it was meant for them
to drink, but you know, you can lead the horse to the water
but you can’t force it to drink. So it is not at all a clear
failure that the EU was side-lined in the negotiations, even
if it is regrettable. It is unfortunately a very thankless
task that the EU has during climate negotiations, as a
demandeur. It is the party that will always have to agree to
the most painful concessions, and that will always be side-
lined by the larger actors. And which will take the blame for
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a variety of things that happen. But I think the EU must be
ready to take on that role. The EU is somewhat masochistic in
a way, and it’s very unfair, but it is the way it has been and
I think it is perhaps the way it must be. In Copenhagen it was
definitely so, that it was China and the US and other who had
to deliver, and they didn’t want to deliver what was necessary
for a binding agreement with far-reaching emission reductions
and all the rest, an arrangement similar to Kyoto simply, they
did not want this. But they delivered something else instead,
the Copenhagen Accord, which came to be the foundation for
future relations. And we can see this, the Copenhagen Accord
in its function works similarly to the climate convention
following Rio, as a foundation. Then the entire negotiation
process is about successively concretising the various key
aspects of this foundation.
And then it can be stated that the Copenhagen Accord
meant that the negotiation system was disconnected from the
form that the EU wanted it to be, namely on the path to a
strong, binding agreement with similar characteristics to
Kyoto. The question of a legally binding agreement remains a
controversial issue, and one where pretty fantastic
compromises are being found. In contrast, there was a success
perhaps not at Copenhagen, although it was an underlying
unpronounced aspect of the Copenhagen Accord, but there was a
success later in the process to make clear that the coming
arrangement should be binding on all parties, that the
firewall would be abandoned. Then the parties are to varying
degrees in agreement about that interpretation.
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The there has actually been progress between the US and
China. And it’s very encouraging ahead of Paris that both
China and the US have managed to agree on something that still
is somewhat ambitious, it must be said. Naturally not enough,
but in relation to what it could have been, it’s still quite
ambitious. So the conditions ahead of Paris are not too bad,
the way I see it. Adding to that, something that is
extraordinarily important and which was missing before but we
now begin to see, is that facts on the ground are emerging. We
are seeing the growth of a renewables industry, with a great
many stakeholders. And many countries actually begin to
believe that wind and sun can deliver something. I think that
during the last 10 years, a belief in in an alternative
development so to speak has not existed, but this has
gradually emerged, and the cost image has changed dramatically
over the last ten years, for both wind and sun, and energy
conservation, and all of this which is sustainable in the long
term affects the view of countries on the potential for an
agreement. But it must be remembered, a country’s instructions
ahead of a negotiation round is only an expression for how a
country views its interest, and what is possible and what can
be achieved. And there are actually significantly more
countries today who actually want to and recognise that an
alternative way of development is possible other the
conventional one which is based on fossil fuels. And it is
extremely exciting that 2014 became the first year where
global emissions did not increase. Maybe we have actually
peaked, it would be great to believe so. Despite that global
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growth has increased. I think this is a determining factor in
reality for the negotiations’ ability to deliver.
Yes, with regards to the dynamic between the EU presidency and
the COP presidency, how did you experience this in Copenhagen?
Sweden was supposed to coordinate, but the Danes were very
important. Do you believe that this contributed to or was an
obstacle in the end for the negotiations, and do you think
this has changed in any way since then?
I think that the EU’s cooperation with the climate
secretariat was good, that it was of the character it was
supposed to be. There were no conflicts, a good cooperation on
the whole. I have also experienced it very much from the
inside, especially before and after the presidency as I
chaired several processes, and then I sat with them, I was
more allied with the secretariat than the EU’s machinery. So I
was in Cancun for example, where the process focused on the
shared vision, which became the basis for agreement on the 2-
degree target. So I’ve experienced this from both sides, and I
see no major problems in that relationship. What was however
seemed problematic was the relationship between the
secretariat and the Danish presidency, and why that was the
case I don’t really know. I think that it was very traumatic
that the Danish presidency switched their negotiation team a
few months ahead of the Conference. The ladies and gent’s of
the Prime Minister’s team took over.
And why do you think this happened?
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That was due to internal conflicts within the Danish
government. And it was devastating, I would claim. They had a
very well established team that of course also had an
extensive network within the negotiation group, and naturally
well-established relations with the climate secretariat. And
in Copenhagen, and I have had this confirmed afterwards, it
seemed as if the Danish presidency didn’t understand how
important the climate secretariat is. It is important for the
presidency to work closely with the secretariat, as they have
an incredible competence there. You can get so much good
advice, and so much information there, and also concrete help,
concrete support. My experience is that a presidency has to
rely on the secretariat. I also know that many are worried
because the secretariat is so strong, so there is a worry that
the secretariat can have its own agenda. There is always a
suspicion, the same way that within the EU family there are
always suspicions against the Commission (Laughter). Sometimes
well-founded, but often in a very unjust way. They try to be
helpful, but it is natural, they have many very skilled
people, and it is very hard for the rotating presidency to
match this incredibly professional organisation. And the same
applies to relations between the rotating presidencies under
the climate convention and the climate secretariat. At some
point it has to be accepted and embraced that there is a
skilled climate secretariat.
Do you think that EU coordination could have been done better
as well?
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Naturally it could have, and now you’re of course
speaking to the person who had the primary responsibility for
that coordination. Of course, we could have done things
better, it would be very strange otherwise. But I do not
believe that the EU bloc collapsed, we kept our group
together. And if we look at the entire negotiation process I
believe that the EU kept together, Sweden and the preceding
presidency succeeded in their primary task. This is important:
the presidency’s most important function, what the Commission
cannot do, is to maintain the cohesion of the Union. A
prerequisite for the EU to succeed is always that it can stay
together. This cannot be underlined enough. I have experienced
how traumatic it can be when the EU disintegrates, what
happened in The Hague. There we had a French presidency, who
did the exact same mistake as the French did in Paris, namely
change their negotiation team a couple of weeks before, and
this meant that the EU could not keep together. The British
began playing their own game, as did the Germans, and everyone
was watching with extreme suspicion, there was a bad
atmosphere. This is actually the absolutely most important
task of the EU presidency. And I would claim that we
maintained the EU bloc. It is always trick to review oneself,
but I believe we succeeded with that particular task.
What we might have done better was to place the EU more
centrally in the negotiations. Then we’re back in what I would
say is not really the most important issue, namely to be seen
and be the key actor, but we could still have been seen more,
and we ended up in some unfortunate discussions, including
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ones about the Kyoto protocol and the EU’s will to carry it
on. There, we could have done better. But that’s always the
case, you can be wise after the fact.
Would you be able to comment briefly on the EU’s approach to
third parties after Copenhagen?
It is important to ensure that developing states can
speak for themselves, and not for Saudi Arabia, China, or
others. It is unfortunately so that the countries who will be
the worst affected are those who are the weakest, that is part
of the nature of the issue, they will be affected because they
are weak. Then they travel to conferences with two delegates,
and they cannot cope. They’re not bad negotiators, the ones
who do come I would say are very skilled, but two are not
enough to grasp the negotiations and affect the negotiations,
so they become completely dependent on their negotiation
groups. They are left in the hands of resource capable
delegations, not the least OPEC countries. I do hope that time
will work for a change in this regard.
A proposition in the literature is that the EU’s emphasis on a
top-down agreement with legal force may not be feasible, and
if this does not work in the end, mainly due to the decision
making process at COP’s, it is possible to use building block
agreements to achieve a similar effect. Do you think this is
an alternative if the original approach fails to deliver?
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I believe that to be an unfortunate development, but if
we can’t reach a global agreement that is what we will have to
do. But we can’t get as far with this method. And the reason
for this is that if you don’t have a global framework, under
which you could have several projects and agreements, one does
not exclude the other, but a global framework instead be a
support for these types of regional or sectorial or climatic
cooperation. If you do not have this, different regions or
countries will be worried about losing competitiveness, about
carbon leakage and similar issues. You need a foundation for
countries to really dare to utilise their full potential.
It is possible to do both at the same time. It is
actually very good to have processes coming both from above
and below, because if you manage to have bottom up processes
they create confidence, like I said earlier, facts on the
ground, that it is possible. It is possible that the EU can
cut emissions by 20%. These facts affect what is perceived to
be possible, and what is deemed to be possible at the
international level. And the other way around as well, it can
affect what is believed to be possible at the local level. So
I prefer to see all types of cooperation to that effect, but I
am convinced that we need a global framework, and that this
can only be created under the climate convention. It is only
the UN that provides the necessary legitimacy towards the
important growth economies.
China is prepared within the UN to go much further than
otherwise, because of this legitimacy.
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Having focused on China in the past, I’d imagine that is in
particular the legally binding aspect of an agreement would be
a primary point of conflict.
Yes, that would be very hard with China. As would it be
with the US. Besides, the US has a congress, which doesn’t
like this! On the other hand China has corruption, and it’s
very hard for central government to control the provinces and
so on. So I would claim, as I have done in the past, that a
prerequisite for a progressive environmental policy is
democracy. Sometimes I hope I am wrong, because that would
make the outlook very bleak in the world at this point. It is
easy to believe that when central decisions are made in China
they are carried out, but this isn’t necessarily the case. I
also think that it is very healthy to have an environmental
opinion, which pushes policy makers when needed. That is what
we have, and I would claim that it is one of the main reasons
why we are so progressive.
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ANNEX II: Interview with Anonymous Council Official Interview conducted in Brussels, 15 April 2015.
Any reflections that you have relating to the preparatory
process leading up to Copenhagen, and anything relating to how
Copenhagen is remembered as an event within the institutions,
and how that affects the process at this point would be very
useful.
Well, that’s a question that we could spend some time,
because it is very broad, and there are lots of parameters to
talk about. I will focus on the essentials. I will try to make
a distinction between Copenhagen and now, I think that it will
be easier to understand as well.
I would say that it’s completely different now, we are in
a completely different world now pre-Paris than we were pre-
Copenhagen. When we look at Copenhagen, the basic problem that
we had was that we were not prepared! People went into that
conference thinking, well we knew already that nothing
substantial was going to come out, the insiders let’s say, but
the world was thinking that we were going to get out of
Copenhagen with a fully fledged deal to combat climate change
for the next decade. That was simply not possible. There was
no draft agreement, the parties had not come up with their
pledges sufficiently in advance. I remember the pledges for
some had come out some months in advance, one month in
advance, that’s something that cannot work, clearly. I
remember for example that the financing pledges, the 100
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billion per year, that was something that was essentially
endorsed when Hillary Clinton arrived, and said that “by the
way, that is something we are going to do as well”. So
basically, the dynamics were not in place to have an agreement
there.
If you compare that now, to pre-Paris, we’re not in a
perfect world, sure, but there are some very clear
differences. We have a draft text. You can argue about this
text, because it’s unreadable, it’s unwieldy, but at least you
have basis to work on where you can say “this is something
that we can work on the coming months”. That was not available
pre-Copenhagen. Secondly, we have in place a whole process for
the INDC’s, the contributions. So we have already not a lot,
we have only six contributions or seven contributions that
have come in until now. But there is this process going on.
You have this text; you have the contributions, you the
ongoing debate. It’s still very difficult: we have to
acknowledge in the end maybe we will only get a minimalistic
agreement with the parameters, with the contributions, and
with hopefully an upward review mechanism were we can in the
end reach the 2 degrees. But at least we have everything in
place to get there, and that was not available pre-Copenhagen.
That is for the general international dynamics. When you
look at the EU internal dynamics, well, it’s related to what
I’ve said from the international side. I think that from an EU
internal dynamic perspective we have made a major mistake pre-
Copenhagen, and that was to announce, I think in September,
that we were going to abandon the Kyoto protocol. I think that
was a basic mistake, because there was no need to do that; we
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could just have gone on to see what would happen. I am not
going to say that this contributed to the failure, but at
least it was the spirit, in this spirit that we had no draft
text, we had no contributions, we had no clarity, and to add
on top of this this, that was not helpful. So also the EU was
to blame in the preparation, in the run up to Copenhagen,
there were mistakes made, and the EU made at least one
mistake.
The other issue that was related to the international
dynamics is this involvement of Heads of state and heads of
government. The EU needs to involve heads of state and
government, of course, they need to have political ownership
of things. But what was wrong in Copenhagen I think was to
involve them in almost line by line drafting, and that was
after we had realised, or the Danish COP presidency had
realised, that it was going nowhere, this agreement that we
were going to have, and that we were working on a declaration,
and which heads of state were drafting line by line. I’ve
never seen such a thing, and I think the heads of state were
also surprised to see that. And that was also a major flaw and
I think that is something the French are reflecting on right
now, because the French know they have to have a balance
between the involvement of the heads of state, but not
involving the heads of state in such a way that they become a
hindrance to a final agreement.
As far as EU internal organisation is concerned, I think
there have been serious improvements since pre-Copenhagen. I
mean, pre-Copenhagen, the problem was that, if I remember
correctly, it was on the first of December that year that the
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Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, and that was very awkward
because you had a whole new institutional framework that had
to be put in place, but I mean, that was impossible of course,
because you could not do it in two weeks time. But still, what
we have to say now is, the framework that should have been in
place is still not in place legally speaking, because legally
speaking, the basis of the Lisbon treaty, and that is what our
legal service says, and I think all the legal services of the
institutions would say, is that the Commission has to present
a proposal for a Council decision to negotiate there. They
haven’t done so until now, that’s already six years ago, for a
variety of reasons. If we go into that, that can also lead us
quite far, but basically for political reasons, because they
are of the view that they have enough clout now in the
negotiations that they don’t have to ask for a mandate,
because that would upset some of the big Member States that
see that as a competence grab from the Commission. But so
basically we are working on the basis of the same rules as we
were working in the past, and pre-Copenhagen, but in, how to
say, a perfected way in the sense that we are now more in a
kind of EU team spirit. Because if you would just follow the
rules that were used pre-dCopenhagen, which would mean that
the Presidency is the sole responsible for everything. Of
course that is not practical, and it’s not practical if you
look at presidencies that we’ve had from small Member States,
look now at Latvia, the next presidency Luxembourg, they just
cannot manage that. So we have more EU team approach where the
Commission is involved of course and the big Member States,
and that means that there is a sense of ownership that makes
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that things work in practice, even if you could question from
a legal perspective that there is no mandate, and of course
the Council cannot come up with something because there has to
be a Commission proposal for that according to the treaty
rules. But it works in practice right now, and that is what
counts.
And I think that’s the basic picture now comparing pre-
Copenhagen and pre-Paris.
Thank you so much for that. A question that I immediately
think of when I hear what you’ve said so far is that you have
referred to the French as being the ones thinking so heavily
about Paris, and the Conference is in Paris, but if practical
arrangements should still apply to how negotiations are
coordinated, the presidency will be Luxembourg, no? So that
the French are so involved, is that a sign that there is more
pragmatism in how coordination is approached?
Well, I think that as far as the French are concerned,
they are very well organised. I think they’ve demonstrated
that during their previous EU presidency in 2008 when they
managed to get the climate and energy package adopted. That
was in six months time, it was really a challenge they
managed, they are very well organised, coordinated, they have
all the structures in place, and basically their minister of
foreign affairs, Fabius, who is dealing with the Conference,
who is dealing the presidency of the COP in Paris. And then
you have the minister of environment, Segolene Royale, who
will deal with EU coordination, and I think that of course,
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Luxembourg is the EU presidency and is running EU affairs, but
I think that the French will heavily kind of try to influence
the debate there and they also have an interest in the sense
that they need to make clear that the EU is ambitious in what
it is doing, even if the end result of the conference in Paris
will not be the most ambitious one, but at least that they can
show to the world that from the EU perspective they are
pushing for this ambition, and then they settle at the
international level for what is feasible at that point in
time.
Turning a bit more to the meetings leading up to Paris and
during the last couple of years. During the preparatory
meetings, the same process has virtually applied? That hasn’t
been subjected to practical arrangements in the past, or has
it still been a clear coordination between DG CLIMA and the
Member States? So for instance, in Geneva just now?
Well, the working arrangements are always the same during
the last couple of years, apart from that there is more of an
EU team approach as I’ve said. That means in practice, for
example EU coordination meetings are chaired by the
Presidency, that all papers prepared are under the
responsibility of the presidency, but of course they can be
drafted by whomever volunteers. Apart from that, you have the
structure of EU lead negotiators that are the ones who
negotiate effectively, so for example during the Geneva
session, right now there are three EU lead negotiators, one
from the Commission, one from the UK, and one from Germany,
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and it’s the one from the UK who leads the three. And you have
then a whole structure of expert groups, which prepare things.
But the EU team approach has been visualised let’s say in the
fact that more power, more competence is accumulated by the
presidency, the commission and the lead negotiators. And the
most important group is becoming more and more the lead
negotiators, even if it is of course the working groups here
at the Council that set the guidelines, and the Commission
that can make the proposals for those guidelines in those
negotiations.
I have spoken to someone from DG CLIMA who’s been working with
the Conferences, and specifically with regard to how to absorb
third party positions. So when there are new announcements or
when there is progress being made, do you find that when
that’s being presented during preparatory meetings, that it’s
being absorbed appropriately throughout this process and
disseminated, and have you observed and larger changes within
strategies and within the system as a consequence of a
preparatory meeting?
I would say that when we have announcements and documents
from third parties, it is more kind of the experts who look at
them and then present them to the working party so that people
are aware. Except for maybe the INDC’s, I think that now
everyone is looking immediately at INDC’s, they don’t need
experts to do this. But it is thrue that the EU is a little
bit slow in its reaction. The fact that we are so democratic I
would say, and so open, makes it difficult to change our
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position well in advance of a conference. Of course, once you
get at the year-end conference, the political conference where
decisions are made, the ministers are present, and the
negotiating text is put on the table and followed up on quite
quickly, then ministers react on the spot and say we should
accept this or should not accept this. But when you have this
situation earlier in the year, and you don’t need to take a
decision, the EU is not rapid to react on that. It’s more like
we have our position, we need to stick to our position and so
on. And I think that is one of the major elements this year,
if things start moving, because I mean, I am ten years in the
process, I am rather pessimistic about this process, I think
it’s a process that doesn’t work basically, because there are
too many interests. Just have a look at how the UN system on
climate works. I mean, you put together a country of, as the
UK, with Saudi Arabia, or Bolivia. It’s never going to work. I
mean, the UK, who wants ambitions on everything using markets,
using everything at its disposal to get to the targets with a
country like Saudi Arabia that doesn’t really want climate
action, because it is against its interests, and a country
like Bolivia being on the leftist side that markets have never
resolved anything, that developed countries are to blame for
everything, and that we should be brought before an
international tribunal for our crimes. It’s so diverse in
positioning, that it’s very difficult to make it work. In the
end, everyone tries to compromise. Look at Copenhagen, look at
Cancun, look at Doha. There’s always somebody who has a
problem and who blocks. So it’s really very difficult to work.
So what I meant to say is that even if the EU is ready to kind
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evolve in its position, does it really make sense, because the
others will stay ingrained in their position, not move from
their position because some of them have very ideological
positions. And that’s a little bit what I see as a problem in
this process. And that brings me also what I see as, I am not
Madame Soleil, but what I see as the run-up to Paris, we’re
going just to muddle through here, we are going to stay with a
very long the text, nobody is going to change their position,
and in the end it will be the French who will need to put a
very minimalistic text in the second week of the conference.
If it works in another way, and if we manage to reduce that
text, to bring it to a manageable size with only political
options left, I would be very surprised and delighted, but I
don’t think it is going to happen.
There are clear fundamental issues with the UNFCCC regime.
Would you consider that the agreement between the US and China
will contribute to a success?
I think that as you say, the regime that we have now, and
the convention which has been perpetuated within the Kyoto
protocol with this dichotomy between Annex I and non-Annex I
is not going to change in the letter of the agreement, because
we are going to make, if everything goes well, a protocol that
is going to sit under that convention, in accordance with
those principles. But the fact is that the way in which we are
designing this protocol makes these principles more or less
obsolete, or makes that those principles get an evolving
nature, and that, to give you an example, the INDC’s, that’s
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the best example of that this dichotomy between AI and non-AI
does not exist anymore, but that you allow room to everyone to
present their contributions according to their evolving
circumstances. Look at Mexico, what Mexico has proposed for
example, that’s a clear example of that. So even if those
principles stay generic in the convention, you give them a
translation in this new protocol that will make sure that you
in fact more or less abandon them, without saying so because
that would irk developing countries, mainly China and others
would say “no, we’ll never accept that”. So you need to do it
without saying it basically, and I think this agreement
indeed, between the US and China, I think that it’s the basic
agreement to get an agreement in Paris. I mean without that it
would have been impossible. I mean, you need that. It’s clear.
That agreement is the basis for the agreement in Paris. The
only thing now is what we will have is that we will have those
contributions that will come in. We will not get to two
degrees with these initial contributions. So according to me,
what do you need in the 2015 agreement, the Paris agreement?
You need: one, an automatic upward review mechanism so that
every five years you review and you go beyond what you’ve
pledged in the last round. And without this being a continuous
negotiation, we have been in negotiations about a post-regime,
let’s say, now for ten years. We have to stop these
negotiations, so it has to be something automatic that you
don’t need to negotiate about. Second, you need to have in the
Paris agreement, the rules base, the rules infrastructure, so
that you can kind of basically track what is happening, that
you know what the emissions are, that you know what people are
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doing, that you know how markets are working, etc. That’s the
basic thing.
So the Paris agreement doesn’t need to have a lot. You need to
have a binding agreement, you need to have those contributions
anchored somewhere in that agreement. That’s still open, is
that the annex, is that in the agreement it will probably be
an annex because the Americans don’t want it to be in the
agreement because otherwise they need to go through the
senate, and we want to avoid that with the experience of the
US senate. It will need to be something outside from them so
that they can accept the agreement as something that doesn’t
need to go through the senate, and then this target, they do
it through executive action and so on, but it’s not an
international target. I think that is the basis for
everything. So we need to have those initial contributions, an
upward review mechanism and rules, basically. And that’s it.
And the rules then need to be developed in the coming years
before the agreement enters into force in 2020, so you have
still four years to develop those rules which the principles
have been set out in the 2015 agreement. So it’s an agreement
of five pages. I speak without contributions, because if you
take the contributions that will probably be 200 pages or
something like that. But the basic agreement is something like
five pages. Between five and ten pages I would say. Well yeah,
that’s the challenge.
Turning to China: one of the main sticking points coming up
with the EU position is the term legally binding. If it is not
possible at the end of the day to get China onboard with a
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legally binding agreement, would we have to move towards
either a voluntary agreement or a building blocks thinking of
concluding smaller agreements that would add up to the same
sum?
I think that this is an issue for the last night in Paris
at the end of the year, basically. We have avoided making a
decision on this, because there is no agreement on this
basically. So what we have always said is “form will follow
function”, that means let’s first get an agreement on the
substance, and then we will decide on its legally binding
character or not. Of course, that doesn’t preclude that we are
thinking about how to solve this conundrum, because it is a
difficult situation. We have the situation of China that you
outline, we have also the situation of the US, where it needs
to go through the senate, and where we need to see what is
possible and what is not possible. You have also the situation
of India. If you remember, when the mandate for this 2015
agreement was decided that was back in Durban, three or four
years ago, it was India blocking until the end, and it’s
because of this blocking that we have enshrined in the
decision that it would be, I don’t remember the exact wording
now, but a protocol, a legally binding instrument or another
instrument with legal force, so that can be basically
everything. According to the Indians that could still be a set
of decisions, a set of decisions by the COP. There could be
disagreement of course, I think most people disagree with
this. But in the end, this will be the crunch issue on what do
we do with this? What is the legal form, the legal character,
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the legal force of this agreement. I think that, it is very
difficult to answer this right now, but I think that in the
end, if the EU is the only one out there, and it’s the make or
break element of the deal, I can be almost sure that the EU
will go with a non-binding agreement. It’s clear that after
negotiating ten years an agreement after the failure of
Copenhagen, we cannot afford a failure in Paris, but not at
all price, that must be clear! So if you give in on this
legally binding element that is of crucial importance for the
EU, it must be clear that the substance should be good, and
should be capable, because that is the end goal, to at some
point in time put us on track for the two degrees. But I think
that is a consideration for the last night, and I think that
if we get to this point, it will be a difficult decision
within the EU. I can imagine a split within the EU, where some
member could say that we should stay firm on this legally
binding character while other say we should look more at the
substance, and then go with whatever form we have. But as I
say, that’s really the final call, the call at the end of the
conference that we will need to make.
One thing that Copenhagen and Paris has in common is that they
are both in Europe, and that means that there will be many
more stakeholders getting involved in the process. What do you
think is different this time around when it comes to engaging
with these stakeholders ahead of the meeting? Let’s say,
stakeholders outside of the institutions and Member States as
well.
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I think that indeed is a major challenge. When you look
now at what the French are saying they say that they’ve
received 35,000 people at that conference, so that is unheard
of, never seen before, even at Copenhagen they didn’t have so
many people. But what they are doing right now, the French, is
not only an outreach on the government to government level
from the ministry of foreign affairs, visiting other countries
and even the heads of state visiting other countries and
receiving other leaders to speak about this. There is also an
involvement of all possible stakeholders, and it’s cities, its
businesses, it’s everybody that they can enlist, because I
think that they know, they realise that the support of society
will be very important, so I think that the French are doing a
positive preparation to that, and I think that they are
managing right now. We’ll see how it evolves, because nearer
to crunch time, you hear people speaking up more and possibly
criticising some of the elements. And that will then be the
important thing for the French in how they will manage that,
because the Danes were not very good at managing that. They
got more upset than they reacted positively and constructively
to that sort of criticism, and that was one of the major
problems. The other thing, being, of course, if I may, one of
the main, if not the main issue of Copenhagen, and the failure
of Copenhagen, was the fact that the Danes were too US-minded.
You can be US-minded, and there’s no problem in that, the US
was one of the big players there, but you cannot be seen to be
US minded towards the developing countries, that is not
acceptable. And I think that the French there have an
advantage with their special relationship with African
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countries for example, if they play it seriously, and I think
they will be able to play it seriously there.
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ANNEX III: Interview with Anonymous CommissionOfficial, third party relationsInterview conducted via telephone on 14 April 2015. Translated
from its original language.
I would ask you to begin by reflecting on how you think that
COP 15 has affected how the preparatory process for subsequent
conferences after Copenhagen, and interaction with third
parties. It would be fine to speak more generally about these
issues.
What we do now, after Copenhagen, what we did during the
Barroso 2 Commission, with Connie Hedegaard as Climate
Commissioner, was that after we had lost it all, we had to
avoid the image that Europe seemed like an actor who did not
want to do anything. If we wanted to keep on going, we had to
take it as a sign that Europe still had to be the best, and
press the process forward, and that we had to remain
ambitious.
So already before Copenhagen, we had developed the 20-20-
20 package, and that was fine, but we couldn’t just leave it
there. After all, the ones who didn’t want to quit at
Copenhagen also realised that the big emitters weren’t
ambitious enough. Therefore, we at the Commission came out
with the 2050 roadmap, which you might be aware of.
And that was one of the major steps forward. From the
perspective of the Commission, that was already based on the
foundation of the 2030 climate and energy package, which was
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endorsed by the European Council in the end of October last
year. So this works as a basis for the roadmap, as it allows
us have a strategy to be ambitious, and with that trajectory
we could see where we would be at in 2030 with the goal in
2050. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to be
ambitious.
After this, our strategy meant that we had to search for
allies, and there we knew that those who wanted more ambition
are the ones who are our allies. And those who want more
ambition are the small island states, LDC’s, some African
states, which form the Progressives group. And these are the
ones who we consider the most progressive, including the small
island states and Bangladesh,, and also Mexico, South Africa,
and Australia (but those were the days, because that is no
longer the case). Also Chile and some South American states.
During 3-4 years, we met them once in Brussels, once at the
UNGA in New York. And this is an Alliance that could be
strong. And the first victory for this Alliance was in Durban,
where we took the first step towards a conference in Paris. It
was this alliance that pushed this through. And it was also
there for the first time that we saw a split among the G77,
the UN group of developing states that actually lack a lot of
homogeneity, as there is a big difference if you’re Mali or
China. For several years, India and China have spoken for
them, but they really don’t have the same interests. At Durban
we saw them split, and the countries most exposed made clear
that they don’t speak on their behalf, and it was actually an
EU objective to split this group in order to make free those
who support higher ambitions. Also, the BRICS in that group
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have stuck to CBDR, and the firewall division, which is
becoming redundant as China is now the largest emitter, who
must take responsibility now. So this was the strategy, to get
these countries with us and to have them put pressure on India
and China, as they are in the same group, which is obviously
not the same as if we do it.
What we now see in 2015, is that we must focus on INDC’s,
which must deliver more hands-on action to win over those
supporting something happening in 2015, by outlining country
deliverables. We have said that at Paris we need a robust,
international agreement with a common legal framework applying
to all countries, with which we mean no firewall, no CBDR, and
to include clear, fair, binding mitigation targets for all
countries based on evolving global economic circumstances.
This is another way of saying that everyone must do something,
which is obviously subjected to individual circumstances; we
can’t ask Bangladesh to do what we do. But everyone has to do
something. And the third issue is regular review and
strengthening countries targets in the light of the target of
below 2 degrees goal. This means that if we deliver the
INDC’s, the job is not done there. We need to ensure that
everyone lives up to what they say they’ll do. It is clear
with the commitments ahead of Paris we will not reach the
below 2C target, which creates a gap. That’s where the review
clause comes in. The last point is to hold all countries
accountable to each other, and to the public for meeting their
targets.
So this is our ambition. Europe has now come out with a
new climate diplomacy strategy, which you may have heard of.
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Yes. One of our teachers here works for the EEAS, so he has
spoken about their role in climate diplomacy.
Yes, exactly. So this is part of the same regime, saying
that climate cannot be seen in isolation, to ensure that
everyone works with this.
So that’s the strategy, and I don’t think anyone here is
100% that Paris will be the end game, but it will be the
beginning of something else. It will also be the beginning of
determining what we can do with certain strategic partners,
and what we can do bilaterally. I don’t believe that there
will be a new [decisive] COP next year, but maybe in two
years, as many states say we have to take a decisive step in
2017. In Europe, we naturally hope to do something ambitious,
but the details, the devil lies in the details, and that will
be made clear later.
But it is of course important that the Americans and
others, the big countries will be entering actively. And it
may be a bit early to say how they will enter, but if there is
nothing now, there certainly will be nothing next year. We
have a small opportunity now while Obama is still around,
unless Hillary gets elected, but we don’t know.
If I can turn towards the EU’s infrastructure in preparing for
the negotiations, when you work with third countries, how
practically do you communicate successes or other information
about third parties partially within the Commission but also
with the Council, and does this affect the overall strategy?
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This is where the Council’s working groups are so
important. And if we speak about exchanging information and
keeping the Council oriented in what is happening, this is an
ongoing process. They meet regularly. That is one way, and
another way is when we meet directly during preparatory
meetings such as those in Bonn, and there we meet every
morning for coordination meetings. We certainly hope that this
time round we will be more prepared, and we can see in recent
meetings that there is more agreement and that people are
increasingly speaking with one voice. This is where climate
diplomacy has been so important, so that everyone has known
which line to take. But we need to keep each other informed,
and we also need to work with the Presidency. It is the
Presidency who takes the initiative for these meetings,
including the coordination meetings, in the same way that they
take initiative in the working groups.
But you know, there is no one shouting competence here or
competence there, who should do this or that. Recently in
Geneva, for the first time we saw that when we needed to lobby
Argentina, we asked Spain or others to do so, and for India
others, so this is the first time we’re really splitting the
roles, and this creates ownership for successes, so the
Commission doesn’t do everything. This is climate diplomacy at
its maximum. With 90,000 diplomats we can do a hell of a lot
of outreach.
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The way it has looked leading up to Paris and preceding
conferences, do you think that the process has worked
relatively constructively?
Well, it depends on what you speak of when you say that!
I think that the last 4-5 years it has been constructive.
Internally, in Europe it has been much tougher to push
through, to keep the ambition at the same level at the same
time that we’ve had an economic crisis and what have you. This
has been very hard, as a lot of Member States have considered
this to be another thing from Brussels that will cost a lot of
money that we don’t have and so on. So therefore it has been
extremely hard to keep the level of ambition at the same
level. In the EU, we are the locomotive for this issue. This
time has been incredibly though, to get some countries, in
particular the Visegrad countries, to maintain high levels of
ambition. They thought that 2020 was enough.
With this as a basis, do you feel that there are any
reoccurring issues with the coordination process during
preparatory meetings, either with regards to the institutions
or the Member States? Or has the process moved on as intended?
The coordination itself has been OK. Yes.
(discussion after questions)
Copenhagen is incredibly sensitive. They were so keen for
an agreement. And it is very hard to say what really went
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wrong. There were heads of state and government that came
along, there was a [Danish] prime minister that came in far
too late. But there was still a lot of progress at Copenhagen.
There were pledges, and there was progress towards cementing
the 2C degree targets. So Copenhagen did not produce a blank
sheet.
This leads me to an additional question, if you would allow
it. There is one additional common feature between Copenhagen
and Paris, that the conferences are held in Europe. This means
that there will be a much larger range of European
stakeholders, including Heads of State and Government.
I think it will be hard to get an agreement, but if you
want an agreement you need these guys. I think that the French
will drive the process even before the summit, through the G20
or elsewhere, to seal the deal. The French have the logistics.
It will be terribly hard to handle security issues. They
cannot prevent them from participating, and they know that
many have scheduled in these dates in their agendas. But they
don’t want to go if they can’t have an agreement, they don’t
want to do Copenhagen again. I think that during the summer,
perhaps after July, we will know better how it will turn out.
How they enter and how they fit into this.
Do you think that there has been a closer engagement with
coordination from top-level politicians earlier on in the
process, outside of France?
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Well, since the foreign ministers have speak about these
issues now that when they travel, they also speak with their
Heads of State and Government. So now it is definitely a
different level. This was another goal of climate diplomacy,
to involve high-level politicians much earlier on.
But if there is no agreement in sight, then no single
person will want to be there either. Nobody wants to stand
next to Hollande if there is just a one-piece paper to show.
But Ban Ki Moon and Jim Kim of the WB are the big drivers in
all this, and they consider that the climate issue is the
biggest issue for the world. That’s the one, there is no
bigger issue. If they want to make climate their legacy, they
will add additional pressure from the UN level.
And within the US, it is the Pentagon and Homeland
Security that are drivers. It is a pressing security issue,
perhaps more than North Korea (laughter).
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ANNEX IV: Transcript - Interview with Anonymous Commission Official, internal coordinationInterview conducted In Brussels, 22 April 2015.
Could you reflect on whether, and if so how the experience of
Copenhagen has affected the EU’s approach to preparatory
meetings and engagement with third parties, as well as general
coordination?
The immediate thought that I had was that Copenhagen was
a landmark event in the history of the UNFCCC, Some people
picture it as failure. That was maybe not so much because of
how the EU works. We have had other experiences in the past
that influence more substantially how we work in climate
negotiations. We had that COP 6 in The Hague, in 2000. That
one was a total failure, and the way that we worked in the EU
certainly weighed in. There is obviously a big history from
1992 until now, and then we operated from a number of
treaties, so I wouldn’t say Copenhagen such a change of course
in the way we work as such. It’s a long history constant
change in how we work. We’re certainly not perfect, but we’re
a lot better than we were a few years ago.
There are the intersessional meetings, but you need to
picture that there is a lot more than this. You’ve got
informal processes. For example, this year you’ve got COP 21,
and then there are four additional sessions during the year,
one in February in Geneva, one in Bonn in June, and then
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another two Bonn in August and mid October. That’s just the
formal process. Then around it, you’ve got the COP presidency,
the French, who convene informal consultation meetings,
together with the Peruvian COP 20 presidency. There was one
last month, there is another one next month, and there are at
least two other such meetings in the second half of the year.
And then you have the Major Economies Forum, which brings
together major economies at the ministerial level typically So
we are counting on probably four sessions this year, and then
there is the Petersberg climate dialogue coming from the
Germans in a few weeks, and then lots and lots of other
meetings convened by NGO’s, or think tanks or press, with a
subset of parties being represented just to seek common
ground, although you’re not working on a text and they’re not
formal meetings. And then there are all the actual
negotiations. Typically you’ve got all the diplomatic
preparations of the G7/G20, and then the EU-China summit, the
EU select summit with Latin American countries, these kinds of
events. The college-to-college meeting between the EU and the
African Union. Every time you have statements in these sort of
meetings you would have a background of climate change, where
we try to progressively frame how we see things together. So
it’s a much broader exercise. And there’s the climate
diplomacy [strategy] that we adopted in January, to try to
organise ourselves to better, within the EU institutions and
the Member States diplomatic services, to try to have more
input in the process. So there is a lot more going on than the
negotiation process.
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Coming back to the way we’re organised, the negotiation
positions are established in the EU council in different
formations, the main one being environment, that adopts
conclusions from time to time. Typically there would be a set
of conclusions a few weeks before a COP every year, but this
year is different, because there is a lot going on and you
would expect to see EU-level engagement already in the summer
time, so we need to have conclusion adopted earlier. And then
there is the ECOFIN council who need to adopt conclusions on
climate finance. The European Council needs talking from time
to time. In October last year it has adopted the broad lines
of the EU’s contributions to meet the targets in the
agreement, last month it has provided some further details on
how to engage and so on. The Foreign Affairs Council has
adopted the climate diplomacy and so on. You know that the
main formation is the working party under the ENVI council,
which adopts position papers ahead of every negotiation
session. Position papers can be around a page, the Council
conclusions would usually be around two pages maximum. There
would be one position paper per subsidiary body. The UNFCCC
has the Durban platform, which the new agreement, and also
discusses areas of where we can increase ambition before the
entry into force of an agreement. So we call it the ADP, the
ad-hoc working group on the Durban Platform. And then we have
the subsidiary bodies, the SBSTA. Too much detail, you know
this already. For each of these subsidiary bodies, for each
session we adopt a position paper under the working party. And
then the working party has a number of expert groups, made up
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of experts from Member States and the commission, which
prepare the positions adopted by the Council.
So what I’m getting at that is that this is the realm of
establishing what we want. And then, there is the other realm
of negotiating it with the rest of the world. There is a
negotiation team, under the guidance of the current presidency
of the council, the Latvians now, and the Commission. And then
we have the lead negotiators, which are three individuals,
from the UK, Germany and the Commission. I myself am
coordinating the negotiation team together with others. There
you have coordinators by decision track, ADP, SBSTA. You’ve
got coordinators by clusters of issues, like adaptation,
mitigation, climate finance and so on. You’ve got issue
leaders on reaching a solution. So altogether, it would be
about I would say 80 people in the negotiation team.
It would not be good governance to make the position up
as we go into the negotiation team. Whenever there is an open
question, whenever and issue arises on which we haven’t
reached a position, we refer the issue back to the expert
groups and the WPIEI. That’s the basic idea. Then there’s no
need to discuss the tactics, the line to take, in the expert
groups. Full transparency is required when establishing the
position, and the negotiation teams need to be faithful to the
agreed positions, but there is no need to negotiate statements
and so on, in the broader process. It would create massive
inertia in the way we work, which has been a big problem we
had in the past.
We are a big party and a big organisation. We speak with
one voice, for the EU and its Member States, so it requires a
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lot of organisation. If you are, say Norway for example, you
have a lot more liberty to adapt, you can play tactically.
You’re more flexible and you can play in the negotiations. For
us, you just can’t suggest that your position is this while in
fact it’s that, because you’ve got all the Member States
sitting in the back, and they would shout out if there’s
something that isn’t in line with the positions, and lightly
so. So you don’t have the same level of flexibility in
negotiations. At the same time also, whenever you agree on a
position, you can’t change unless you revert back to the
authorities to get approval to change position. So there is a
lot of inertia there. The trouble we had back in 2000, which I
mentioned earlier, is that we had established very strong
positions, kind of as a way to influence the process by
adopting strong positions, but when the time came to make
compromise it turned out to be hopeless. So long as there was
one Member State that kept on saying that it didn’t conform to
the position, then the group wouldn’t move. And then on every
issue there would be someone who said “no, this is the most
important issue for us, we should stick to our position to the
end”, whereas some members would say “no, we should be
flexible and revise our position on that”, others would say
the opposite. The group wouldn’t move at all. And I think we
[the EU] were a problem at that time.
So from that experience of COP 6, people who were there are
very weary of adopting tough positions, because you might et
problems down the line. So we adjust practice to avoid that. I
think that experience from 10-15 years ago would also taught
us that we spent so much time discussing among ourselves,
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while there was a big disconnect with the general discussion
in the world. So we experienced that we should rather engage
with international partners than negotiate among ourselves to
reach an ideal agreement. So we’ve streamlined the way we
work, especially in the way we’ve developed our new
negotiation team. The general idea is that in between
sessions… you need to picture that these are essentially the
same individuals working in the expert groups to elaborate a
position, and in the EU team to negotiate with the rest of the
world. So the idea is that in between sessions it should
general be the work of the expert groups. During sessions, the
expert groups should stay away, as an institution, they should
not come unless there is a need to adopt a new position, and
leave the negotiation team to work in engagement with the rest
of the world. So that has been an evolution of the last 15
years.
The experience of Copenhagen I think was an
acknowledgement that maybe we are not so influential. Because
in 2000 we were so influential that we contributed to the
whole exercise to fail (laughter), whereas in 2009 we failed
to really make a difference and we were taken for granted.
Especially when so the conference is organised within the
European Union, the rest of the world would expect that we
would accept any deal. Our influence is to frame the issue,
rather than standing in the way of a final compromise in the
end. If we say that we are never going to accept this, our
partners would just laugh at us, because they would say “wait
until it’s the last minute, then we’ll see whether you are
able to say no to the final deal”. So there’s a tendency that
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we can observe in the world, and we try to react on that so to
say. We are taken for granted, because we need so much more an
international agreement, and we are keen to uphold the
multilateral process, so people expect that we would be
prepared to make compromise in order to avoid failure.
Obviously, if you are a party who does not care too much about
an agreement, you have much more leverage.
The other thing is that it’s not very much our side to
play the bear during negotiations, to hammer in our positions
and throw our strength around. I think we exert influence more
by throwing ideas in early on in the process, and then be more
in a central position to develop a compromise, to bring our
partners to a common ground. This is how we exert influence,
rather than issuing a range of opinions and sticking to strong
demands, because if we do that then we would just not be part
of the process. So these are changes in the way we work.
A similarity between Copenhagen and Paris is that you will
have a European COP presidency, and this is an issue I have
come across during my research. Could you comment on how the
negotiating team works with the COP presidency when it is a
European state?
This is a highly sensitive topic, because it is very
important for the French to be seen as neutral, impartial. If
they were seen as promoting their interests, then they would
fail. So it would be too easy for parties wanting them to fail
to picture them as unbalanced, so this is very sensitive. They
obviously have their own interests at the conference, so they
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have to rely on the EU to defend their interests, and to stay
away to some extent from it. For example, there is no one from
the French who are speaking on behalf of the EU from the
negotiation team. I mentioned lead negotiators from different
parts of the EU, but also you have EU speakers in subsidiary
formal groups, and you would never see anyone from the French
presidency speaking in any of these groups. The French staff
here has to work from the back office, but not sit behind the
EU nameplate or speak for the EU.
The poles have had two COP’s recently, but they were
minor conferences. You have a negotiation cycle, where you
build up to conferences where more is expected. COP 6, COP 9
and COP 15 were like this, but the ones hosted by Poland were
more for transition in a longer cycle. Yet the Poles have a
special situation in that they have specific interests that
may not match the EU common grounds, so they have to preside
over the conference but also keep their position within the EU
to make sure that the EU position doesn’t go too far away from
their own interests. So they really had to parts of their
team, one for presiding, the other for defending their own
interests within the EU. The French, and the Danes and the
Dutch before didn’t have that problem, because they were
positive towards the tendency of the EU position. The French
cares about whether the EU doesn’t become irrelevant by taking
radical positions, leaving it outside of the mainstream, but
on substance there is no difference so they rely on the EU
negotiation team for their interests.
They need to do a lot more outreach, for COP presidency
purposes, especially with the outliers. Because, in theory you
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have the established subsidiary bodies under the Durban
platform that should deliver an agreement, and all they would
have to do is hammer down the final plenary to adopt the final
agreement that is delivered to them by the ADP group chairs.
In practice, we know that this is not going to happen, so at
some stage, there would be a crisis where they would have to
step in and fix it. In particular, whereas in the EU we try to
favour our natural allies, and we try to talk to everyone but
we talk more to our allies to align strategies and seek common
ground, whereas the French have a very strong interest in
talking to the outliers, the people who could possibly stop a
deal in the final moments, because they need to prevent such a
situation. Just like what happened in Copenhagen for example,
and then the Mexicans learned from it, and they really worked
on the lessons from Copenhagen, to make sure that the same
mistakes were not repeated during the Mexican conference
[Cancun]. The French are maintaining dialogue with the central
outliers.
I think an aspect of your question related to how we take
into account other parties’ views. We’re not that good at
that, because as much as we try to avoid it, there is an
element of group thinking in the way we work. So we have a
history of our conversations in the expert groups to develop
the way we see things, and we tend to keep on building on our
own agreed position, because we find compromise on a
particular language and we expand on that as we go along.
Whereas, technically it would be a lot better to say “what
that government has just said, we agree on that, We’d like to
work on this and that in their proposal”. That would be a lot
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more efficient negotiation process rather than to say “we
ignore what they’ve said, and here is a further elaboration of
our own proposal based on what we told you before”.
The fact that we’re shielding the negotiation team to
some extent from the establishment of the positions enables us
to have that sort of technical approach from time to time, but
still we don’t have that flexibility and natural tendency to
bounce on what other people have said. That’s something we
could improve on.
From what I have come to understand, there is still no
decision providing a formal mandate for the EU in climate
negotiations. Do you think that this is beneficial or
detrimental to the negotiating process?
There are two sides to that coin. You may have identified
that you get national and EU competences here, but you also
get those in between where you can’t say that the Commission
is going to negotiate here, and that or this topic is Member
State competence so the presidency of the Council should
negotiate there. This topic is very much in between, so the
goal will have to be to speak with one voice overall, and then
have the Commission and the presidency negotiating on behalf
of the EU and the Member States. The position we try to
establish in the council conclusion and the working groups, is
that the working arrangements, they are more than informal,
it’s just a close cooperation (laughter). It is a problem,
because it isn’t written down on paper, the operating rules,
and then we keep on facing difficulties with the individuals
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not doing what they should do, so we need to remind them, but
it’s ambiguous all the time. We waste some energy dealing with
organisational issues, but we still feel that with our
prospects for the Paris COP, we can’t afford to open a
negotiation on working arrangements within the working party
and Council. That would absorb so much energy and time
deducted from negotiations ahead of Paris, and interacting
with the rest of the world.
We made that assessment already a while ago. This issue
is also sensitive. I think you need to educate people to the
requirements of the Lisbon treaty, whereas some people have
been there for a long while and they’re used to operating
under structures that existed in the past, that they may not
realise that this is not really consistent with the Lisbon
treaty. It would just be too hard to get everyone on board,
with an agreement based on relatively informal arrangements.
This cost of having to deal with issues every day is not
insignificant, but I think it is manageable with individuals
acting in good faith. Our current way of working is fine, I
guess. Then of course, the system falls under mounting
pressure. Especially I think, that there is a way that we work
on a technical level, and I think the transition to the
ministerial level is very tricky, because you need to transfer
the issue to another group of people who are elected, yet may
not be fully aware of all the subtleties of EU working
arrangements. Then they’re not so familiar with the details or
the substance, and need to briefed. Sometimes, politicians
have strong views. They want this, they want that, and it’s
our job to tell them why it won’t work (laughter). You find
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for example that time and again you will have someone say “I
disagree with what the EU is saying, I just want to take the
floor and say the opposite”. But you can’t do that!
(laughter).
I think we try to operate de facto under a system that….
The way we work would be consistent with the Lisbon treaty if
you were put that down on paper an agree on it with the
negotiation arrangement. But the transaction cost of getting
agreement on that decision through debate would be so high
that we would want to continue to operate informally.
Just to be a bit more precise, I think that the
presidency of the Council has a responsibility to chair the
working party under the Council, and the expert groups under
the working group and so on, whereas the negotiation team,
it’s a joint endeavour between the Commission and the Council.
I don’t think that everyone in the EU would acknowledge that
the Commission has a joint role with the presidency of the
Council in running the negotiation team, whereas that would be
a requirement under the Lisbon treaty. So if we were to put it
down on paper, we would have to deal with the legality of
this, and parties being opposed to it, and it would consume a
lot of time, whereas it has been functioning as is. My
understanding of the Treaties is that in dealing with a mixed
agreement, you have to have the Commission representing the
EU, and then the Council representing the Member States. They
could say the Commission is in charge also of that part, but
more often they would say the current presidency of the
Council is in charge.
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A quick, important point: as we go to that part of the
year, it is increasingly likely that we will not meet on a
technical level but a head of state level. As we move to head
of state level, the EU presidency is off, instead it’s the EC
president, which brings in a whole different game, especially
considering who is the president of the European Council and
his background! (laughter) Then there’s this role of the EEAS.
The rotating presidency of the Council: the experience we
had from the past, in particular 15 years ago, was that we
really had the presidency speaking on behalf of everyone, in
every meeting and contact group and so on. Sometimes you have
relatively small Member States. It is hard for them to put up
good speakers, knowledgeable speakers, so we when we made a
cryptic compromise on a common EU position, that person may or
may not speak good English, so the effect is not great.
(Laughter) People just don’t understand what the EU’s said and
move on with their conversation! So it was highly ineffective.
So we have established this system whereby we’ve got lead
negotiators who speak on a permanent basis. They don’t have a
permanent role, but the team is carried over from presidency
to presidency. So they are more efficient. There’s the
capacity of the speaker, and there’s also the fact that that
speaker is known to the rest of the world, as people are
engaged in long-term relationships on an individual basis,
because you know what that person would support or not
support. If you’re a newcomer, they don’t take so much into
account what you say, and you might be gone in a couple of
months, so why bother. So that division between lead
negotiators and the presidency came from that issue as well.
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It’s a way around the weakness of having a rotating
presidency.
To conclude, what are your expectations of the Paris COP? Do
you think it will be able to deliver an agreement?
I am worried, but not so much because of the French or
because of the EU. I am worried about the process in general.
We’ve got a negotiation text that is around a 100 pages. It
takes about one hour per line to clear a piece of text, so
we’re talking 3,000 hours, which we don’t have. So something
has to happen. Because you know, every Member State of the
United Nations has a say. So it requires a lot to get to an
agreement. Even if we agree on substance, we have to agree on
how to frame it. There we have it. If anyone wants to mess up
the process, there are plenty of political tricks in the bag
to do play for time and make sure that the process doesn’t
move forward. We just don’t have time to take time to take the
text and polish it until we’ve removed the options and get to
an agreement where everyone’s happy.
The ADP co-chairs, one from Algeria and the other from
the United States, they are taking a very cautious approach,
they don’t want to upset anyone in the room, they let the room
do whatever they want. And that’s no very helpful, because you
want to guide the parties to where there is prospect for an
agreement. My guess is that we will have to ramp up to the
political level pretty soon, to extract political questions,
resolve these questions and get back to the legal text and
adopt an agreement, all this to be done in September, so this
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means you need a political agreement by the October session,
but the technical level process has its own dynamics, and
there is still plenty of time left until decision making, so
you stick to your own position and you debate marginal aspects
and stick to your views with strong positions, and there is
really no progress. Because of this, the size of the
negotiation text, the number of parties involved, the number
of issues to be dealt with is really scary. We will see how
this can be dealt with.
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