Description
Presentation of paper 'The EU as a Global Actor: Climate Stewardship and Extraterritoriality'. With the Paris 2015 climate summit drawing nearer, the pressure is on for the international community to finally reach a legally binding agreement on the mitigation of climate change. While reciprocity concerns continue to form a stubborn obstacle, all eyes are fixed on how much key emitting states, particularly China and the US, will be willing to commit to the global effort. As the situation currently stands, not enough has been done to prevent a dangerous increase in the earth’s temperature, and the question remains whether the projected multilateral agreement will deliver adequate results. Amidst this collective inaction, the European Union has been going green, profiling itself as a protagonist of the global climate. From the EU’s perspective, this approach could be characterised as one of ‘climate stewardship’, pursuing the long-term protection of a ‘global common’ above and beyond its domestic interests. While much of its action is internally focussed, the EU has also been looking outwards, trying to broaden the scope of climate mitigation measures. As climate change mitigation is a global public good, its provision by the EU creates a benefit for all, lending support to the EU’s claim to climate stewardship. Yet matters become politically and legally controversial when the unilateral activities also impose costs on those outside of the EU, and it is this aspect that forms the focus of this discussion. This paper aims to analyse EU climate stewardship within the framework of international law, with a particular emphasis on the law of state jurisdiction. It starts with a brief introduction to the concept of extraterritoriality, providing a conceptual framework within which to analyse the EU’s climate stewardship activities. This is followed by an examination of the political issues inherent in the prevention of climate change, which have given rise to EU unilateral action. Turning to the EU, the various climate stewardship measures are then analysed as four different categories of unilateral acts with extraterritorial effects. These are policy forging unilateralism, conditional aid, preferential market access and blanket market access requirements. While all of the categories some degree of external effects, the most controversial are climate-related market entry conditions, claimed by some to be an exercise of ‘extraterritorial jurisdiction’ and as such illegal in nature. Focusing on the law of jurisdiction, this claim will be examined in more detail, discussing conflicting conceptions of ‘extraterritorial measures’ and possible further development of the concept in the field of environment.| Period | 8 May 2015 |
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| Event title | Leuven Doctoral Colloquium |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Leuven, BelgiumShow on map |