Global climate politics: can the EU be an actor?

Vogler, John

Abstract

Introduction It has become commonplace in discussions of environmental and other global issues to treat the EU as if it were a single purposive entity. The Union is urged to act, even to lead. From the early days of the UNFCCC it has, perhaps ostentatiously, ascribed such a leading role to itself. Leadership is the theme of this volume but it is logically inseparable from the capacity to act which may, inelegantly, be described as ‘actorness’. Normally this point would hardly be worth making, individuals and state governments obviously perform acts of leadership. However, with the EU there is a problem that requires consideration of the definition of a political actor, something that is normally taken for granted. The problem is quite simply expressed. The Union is neither an emergent federal state nor an over-developed international organisation. In an international system where the capacity to act has conventionally been confined to sovereign states (although with some modification for certain types of international organisation) the EU is unique, an entity which is according to the international lawyers, sui generis. This chapter sets up some criteria to establish the extent to which the EU may be regarded as an international actor in general and more specifically in the field of climate change policy. The analysis is based upon previous work (Vogler 1999, Bretherton and Vogler 1999, 2006, 2013) and suggests four characteristics that one might expect an international actor to exhibit. They are: autonomy, volition, negotiating capability and the ability to deploy policy instruments. These outward and visible signs of actorness rely upon various capabilities possessed by the Union but they are also dependent upon its broader ‘presence’ in the global political economy and upon the opportunity structure that confronted Union decision-makers at particular points in the history of the international climate regime. While this structure may have facilitated the development of EU actorness and its leadership ambitions during the 1990s and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the failure to deliver a new climate settlement at Copenhagen in 2009 (see Chapter 6) and the relative exclusion of the Union from the negotiation of the ‘Accord’ were seen as an adjustment to new and changed international realities (Grubb 2010).

Citation

Vogler, J. (2016). Global climate politics: can the EU be an actor?. In The European Union in International Climate Change Politics. (1). Taylor and Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315627199-13

• Online Publication Date: Nov 25, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 25, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 6, 2023
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Book Title: The European Union in International Climate Change Politics
• Chapter Number: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315627199-13
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315627199-13/global-climate-politics-eu-actor-john-vogler?context=ubx&refId=5a01f8b0-a102-441c-b44d-a6e0a0763961
• Related Public URLs: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315627199/european-union-international-climate-change-politics?refId=43cc59ac-2b99-4881-95c6-ed752371bdaf&context=ubx