ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the participation and contribution of the EU to international environmental negotiations. It gives an overview of the EU’s status as a partner in these negotiations and as a party to multilateral environmental agreements. In order to grasp how the EU acts as a negotiator at the international level, it is important to understand the internal division of legal competences, the external representation arrangements and the internal coordination process in the EU. This chapter also reviews the role of the EU in international environmental negotiations, the impact that the EU can have on their outcomes and the future challenges confronting the EU as it seeks to exert greater international leadership. It concludes that the EU’s impact on the outcome of global environmental politics is still rather limited. In order to increase its impact, several important challenges will have to be confronted, not least the increasing political contestation of the multilateral system.
