Bringing it All Together: the EU’s Climate Diplomacy Across the International Regime Complex on Climate Change: the Case of the Paris Agreement

The EU participates in many international fora related to climate change, each with its own norms, scope, and membership (e.g. UNFCCC, G20, Montreal Protocol). Collectively, these fora make up the international regime complex on climate change (IRCCC). For ambitious actors like the EU, the IRCCC presents the opportunity to use the other fora of the complex to facilitate reaching their preferences in a given focal forum, particularly for negotiating multilateral agreements. However, the EU’s climate diplomacy in each forum continues to be studied in relative isolation. While EU official documents strongly hint at the EU’s intent to connect its action in different climate fora, it remains unclear what connections actually took place. In considering how the EU might connect its activity across different fora, this paper seeks to potentially reconceptualise EU climate diplomacy. It addresses the following research question: How is the EU’s diplomacy in one forum connected to its activity in the other fora of the IRCCC? We investigate 1) what types of connections the EU uses (or does not) and 2) why (or not) the EU does so (or not). To answer our research question, we examine the case study of the negotiations on the Paris Agreement, adopted within the UNFCCC. As EU climate diplomacy on the Paris Agreement represents perhaps the best recent example of coordinated EU climate diplomacy, it offers a high likelihood of the EU utilising connections. Using official EU documents, reports from media and observers, and semi-structured interviews with EU officials involved in the events, we aim to (1) provide empirical insight into actor activity within regime complexes; (2) better understand the breadth of EU climate diplomacy and (3) present a fresh perspective on how EU climate diplomacy in the lead-up to the Paris Agreement contributed to a successful outcome for the EU.