ABSTRACT
Most EU member states have a long history of progressive state environmental policies and that the EU has taken a leading role in global talks on environmental protection and global climate change. As embedded in the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon, all EU policies and decisions must consider negative environmental impacts. The EU introduced its first European Climate Change Programme (ECCP) in 2000, which became the most important mechanism to meet the Kyoto Protocol objectives. Since then, the EU has developed numerous policies on mitigation, adaptation, and capacity building to climate change challenges. These demonstrate that the EU is addressing global climate change (GCC). largely from a human security perspective. In 2015, the EU’s Climate Actions Progress Report affirmed that some progress has been achieved on climate change objectives for 2020 in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol. The recent migration waves from the Middle East and Africa present challenges to the external security of the EU and to integration and collaboration among member-states. This chapter finds that while the EU has generally been a leader in international efforts to address GCC, stressing a concern of human security needs, there is in the EU a developing securitization of the challenges of human migration.
