EU Performance in the International Climate Negotiations in 2013: Scope for Improvement. IES Policy Brief Issue 2014/01/January 2014

Summary. The European Union (EU) has long been an important player and even a leader in the international cooperation on climate change. In 2013, preparations for a new global climate agreement in 2015 moved centre stage in the international negotiations. This policy brief assesses the EU’s performance in 2013 culminating in the Warsaw conference in November 2013. We find that the EU was actively engaged in the negotiations and pursued partially ambitious/progressive policy objectives, which it was partly successful in realising. The policy brief argues that international EU leadership for a 2015 agreement requires (1) building an international leadership alliance including the EU and other progressive countries and (2) serious homework by the EU to advance domestic climate mitigation efforts both by 2020 and 2030, and to enhance its position on climate finance.

EU Policy on Climate Change Mitigation since Copenhagen and the Economic Crisis. CEPS Working Document No. 380, 5 March 2013

The EU has long assumed leadership in advancing domestic and international climate change policy. While pushing its partners in international negotiations, it has led the way in implementing a host of domestic measures, including a unilateral and legally binding target, an ambitious policy on renewable energy and a strategy for low-carbon technology deployment. The centrepiece of EU policy, however, has been the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), a cap-and-trade programme launched in 2005. The ETS has been seen as a tool to ensure least-cost abatement, drive EU decarbonisation and develop a global carbon market. After an initial review and revision of the ETS, to come into force in 2013, there was a belief that the new ETS was ‘future-proof’, meaning able to cope with the temporary lack of a global agreement on climate change and individual countries’ emission ceilings. This confidence has been shattered by the simultaneous ‘failure’ of Copenhagen to deliver a clear prospect of a global (top-down) agreement and the economic crisis. The lack of prospects for national caps at the international level has led to a situation whereby many member states hesitate to pursue ambitious climate change policies. In the midst of this, the EU is assessing its options anew. A number of promising areas for international cooperation exist, all centred on the need to ‘raise the ambition level’ of GHG emission reductions, notably in aviation and maritime, short-lived climate pollutions, deforestation, industrial competitiveness and green growth. Public policy issues in the field of technology and its transfer will require more work to identify real areas for cooperation.

Recalibrating CSDP-NATO relations: the real pivot. Security Policy Brief No. 47, June 2013

In an age of major power shifts, which we know from history always to be particularly dangerous, different scenarios are possible; the only promising one is that of more and well-structured international cooperation. Yet, critical voices point at a drifting apart of longstanding allies. Recalibrating CSDPNATO relations has become more important than ever.

The EU’s comprehensive approach towards security: the Lisbon Treaty and “smart power”. EU Centre Singpore Policy Brief No. 6, May 2013

The European Union (EU) has increasingly become a comprehensive security actor. With the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as a reaction to the failure of the EU to act during the wars in Yugoslavia/Western Balkans in the 1990s, the EU has a wide range of instruments for crisis prevention, crisis management as well as post-crisis intervention at its disposal. Observers typically agree that “hard power” is no longer sufficient to address the complex security challenges of today’s world while the EU, often criticised for only utilising “soft power”, is now able to exercise “smart power”. Through a comprehensive approach, facilitated by the Lisbon Treaty, the EU can now use the various instruments at its disposal, such as diplomacy, development aid, humanitarian assistance, trade, sanctions, international cooperation and crisis management capabilities in a joined-up manner. This mix of tools and instruments is helping the EU to achieve the aim set out in its European Security Strategy: “a secure Europe in a better world”.

Restoring Order in Global Health Governance: Do Metagovernance Norms Affect Interorganizational Convergence? CES Open Forum Series #23, 2014-2015

This paper theorizes about the convergence of international organizations in global health governance, a field of international cooperation that is commonly portrayed as particularly hit by institutional fragmentation. Unlike existing theories on interorganizationalism that have mainly looked to intra- and extraorganizational factors in order to explain why international organizations cooperate with each other in the first place, the paper is interested in the link between causes and systemic effects of interorganizational convergence. The paper begins by defining interorganizational convergence. It then proceeds to discuss why conventional theories on interorganizational- ism fail to explain the aggregate effects of convergence between IOs in global (health) governance which tend to worsen rather than cushion fragmentation — so-called "hypercollective action" (Severino & Ray 2010). In order to remedy this explanatory blind-spot the paper formulates an alternative sociological institutionalist theory on interorganizational convergence that makes two core theoretical propositions: first that emerging norms of metagovernance are a powerful driver behind interorganizational convergence in global health governance, and secondly that IOs are engaged in a fierce meaning-struggle over these norms which results in hypercollective action. In its empirical part, the paper’s core theoretical propositions are corroborated by analyzing discourses and practices of interorganizational convergence in global health. The empirical analysis allows drawing two far-reaching conclusions. On the one hand, interorganizational harmonization has emerged as a largely undisputed norm in global health which has been translated into ever more institutionalized forms of interorganizational cooperation. On the other, discourses and practices of interorganizational harmonization exhibit conflicts over the ordering principles according to which the policies and actions of international organizations with overlapping mandates and missions should be harmonized. In combination, these two empirical findings explain why interorganizational convergence has so far failed to strengthen the global health architecture.