An outside-in assessment of the EU’s leadership role in global environmental negotiations: Is the EU an ambitious, active leader?

Pipart, Frauke [UCL] Delreux, Tom [UCL]

Applying an innovative outside-in perspective, this paper explores the leadership role of the European Union in contemporary global environmental politics. The selected cases to study are the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Environment Assembly. Three issue-specific dimensions of the EU’s leadership role are examined: environmental ambition, diplomatic activity and influence. Aiming to map these dimensions from an outside-in perspective, the paper uses observations by reporters from the Earth Negotiation Bulletin (ENB) of the EU’s role in the different global environmental frameworks. Through a targeted online-survey and follow-up interviews, the ENB reporters have assessed the EU’s leadership role. This outside-in perspective allows for maximizing the observational distance between the source of the observation and the object of the study. The paper inquires how the leadership role of the EU varies between different negotiation contexts and within each forum.