Doha/COP 18: gateway to a new climate change agreement. CEPS Commentary, 13 December 2012

Drawing on his recent experience in the climate negotiations in Doha as an advisor and negotiator on a wide variety of issues, Andrei Marcu offers his assessment of the progress achieved in the two weeks of intensive talks. In spite of modest results, he describes the talks as an important and necessary step in the revolution, first ignited at the Montreal negotiations in 2005, that rejected the top-down Kyoto Protocol model in favour of a bottom-up climate change regime. In his view, the decisions taken in Doha enable the start of a new negotiating process aimed at delivering a new global climate agreement.

Low key but not low impact: the results of the EU's 'transition' summit. EPC Post-Summit Analysis, 27 October 2014

The European Council Summit of 23-24 October 2014 may have been relatively low key, but many important decisions were made which could encourage historical changes. In this post-summit analysis, Janis A. Emmanouilidis examines the agreement reached on a new climate and energy policy framework for 2020-2030 which despite falling short of the European Commission’s original proposals, it nevertheless delivers a positive message to international community ahead of the global climate negotiations next year. He also highlights the significance of the request from euro-zone leaders for a new report on ‘better economic governance’ by December. More broadly, he uses this moment of transition in the EU’s leadership to analyse the current state and future direction of the Union, and underlines the need to provide a coherent and holistic response to the damage caused by the crisis and the challenges facing the Union, on the basis of an ambitious but pragmatic ‘package deal’ – a new pact between EU governments, and between the Union and its citizens – to heal the divisions of recent years and restore public faith in the benefits of EU membership.

The prospects for the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement. OSW Commentary No. 94, 2012-10-15

The European Union and Ukraine initialled the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area Agreement (DCFTA) on 19 July 2012. The scope of the agreement which the EU and Ukraine reached following their negotiations is much more extensive than that of a typical free trade agreement. It envisages not only the lifting of tariff and extra-tariff barriers but also, more importantly, Kyiv adopting EU legal solutions and standards in this area. Whether the agreement will be signed and implemented is still an open question and depends on the existing political conditions. On the one hand, the repression imposed by the government in Kyiv on its political opponents (including the detention of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko) has provoked criticism from the EU, which refuses to sign the agreement if the government in Kyiv continues to violate democratic principles. The manner in which Ukraine’s parliamentary elections are conducted this October will be the key test. On the other hand, Russia is increasingly active in its efforts to involve Ukraine in the integration projects it has initiated (the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Community). It should be noted that Moscow has effective instruments to exert its will, such as the dependence of the Ukrainian economy on supplies of Russian oil and gas and on exports to the Russian market. Besides, Moscow also has political instruments at its disposal. It is impossible to participate in integration projects both with the EU and with Russia. Therefore, Kyiv will have to make a strategic decision and choose the direction of its economic integration. Unless Ukraine takes concrete action to implement its agreements with the EU, primarily including the free trade agreement, its economic dependence on Russia will grow, and it will be more likely to join the Russian integration projects.

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL AND THE WTO: INSTITUTIONAL EVOLUTION AND ADAPTATION. CEPS Policy Brief No. 28/December

Overview. Questions about the interface between the multilateral climate regime embodied in the Kyoto Protocol and the multilateral trade regime embodied in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have become especially timely since the fall of 2001. At that time, ministerial-level meetings in Marrakech and Doha agreed to advance the agendas, respectively, for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and for negotiations on further agreements at the WTO. There have been concerns that each of these multilateral arrangements could constrain the effectiveness of the other, and these concerns will become more salient with the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. There are questions about whether and how the rights and obligations of the members of the WTO and the parties to the Protocol may conflict. Of particular concern is whether provisions in the Protocol, as well as government policies and business activities undertaken in keeping with those provisions, may conflict with the WTO non-discrimination principles of national treatment and most-favoured nation treatment. The WTO agreements that are potentially relevant to climate change issues include many of the individual Uruguay Round agreements and subsequent agreements as well. The principal elements of the Kyoto Protocol that are particularly relevant are its provisions concerning emissions trading, the Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation, enforcement, and parties’ policies and measures. In combination, therefore, there are numerous potential points of intersection between the elements of the Kyoto Protocol and the WTO agreements. Previous studies have clarified many issues, as they have focused on particular aspects of the regimes’ relationships. Yet, some analyses suggest that the two regimes are largely compatible and even mutually reinforcing, while others suggest that there are significant conflicts between them. Those and other studies are referenced in the ‘suggestions for further reading’ section at the end of the paper.1 The present paper seeks to expand on those studies by providing additional breadth and depth to understanding of the issues. The analysis gives special attention to key issues on the agenda – i.e. issues that are particularly problematic because of the likelihood of occurrence of specific conflicts and the significance of their economic and/or political consequences. The paper adopts a modified ‘triage’ approach, which classifies points of intersection as (a) highly problematic and clearly in need of further attention, (b) perhaps problematic but less urgent, and (c) apparently not problematic, at least at this point in time. The principal conclusions are that: · The missions and objectives of the two regimes are largely compatible, and their operations are potentially mutually reinforcing in several respects. · Some provisions of the multilateral agreements that may superficially seem at odds are not likely to become particularly problematic in practice. · ‘Domestic policies and measures’ that governments may undertake in the context of the Protocol could pose difficult issues in the context of WTO dispute cases. · Recent WTO agreements and dispute cases acknowledge the legitimacy of the ‘precautionary principle’ and are thus consistent with the environmental protection objectives of the Protocol. · The relative newness of the climate regime creates opportunities for institutional adaptation, as compared with the constraints of tradition in the trade-investment regime. · The prospect of largely independent evolutionary paths for the two regimes poses a series of issues about future international regime design and management, which may require new institutional arrangements. In sum, the present paper thus finds that although there are some areas of interaction that are problematic, the two regimes may nevertheless co-exist in relative harmony in other respects –more like ‘neighbours’ than either ‘friends’ or ‘foes’, as Krist (2001) has suggested.