"The Europeanization of German Climate Change Policy"

Hatch, Michael T. (2007) "The Europeanization of German Climate Change Policy". In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (84Kb) | Preview

Abstract

[From the introduction]. Throughout the series of international negotiations leading to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, Germany, along with the European Union (EU), have been at the forefront of efforts to address the challenges of global warming. In October 1990, for example, the European Community (EC) adopted a target of stabilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000 – a position pushed, in part, by the German and like-minded European governments to give them greater influence in those international climate change negotiations. In advance of the third conference of the parties (COP3) to the FCCC, the European Union called for a 15 percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2010. This EU target was based on a burden-sharing arrangement in which Germany was a major contributor—a 25 percent reduction in domestic CO2 emissions, which translated into an estimated 80 percent of total EU reductions. In the aftermath of the compromise reached at Kyoto, the burden-sharing arrangements negotiated within the EU called for Germany to undertake a 21 percent domestic cut in emissions of the basket of six greenhouse gases (GHGs) stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol. Clearly, Germany has been an important player in the global climate change negotiations and is central to the commitments assumed by the EU under the Kyoto Protocol – in the absence of substantial reductions of GHG emissions by Germany, the EU has little chance of meeting its international obligations. The core question to be addressed in this paper is the degree to which the EU has been able to influence the adoption and implementation of global climate change policy at the national level. More specifically, using an analytic framework informed by the literature on “Europeanization,” the paper will first assess the extent to which membership in the EU has shaped German climate change policy. Attention will then turn to the identification of mechanisms that help explain domestic change, taking care to separate the role of the EU from other potential influences.

Actions (login required)