European Union

Arguably, the EU’s most structural influence in international environmental policy is through its standard-setting for products on its internal market, as with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). CBAM allows the EU to raise a carbon tariff intended to halt carbon leakage and level the playing field for internal producers, subject to the Emissions Trading System, with external producers. CBAM thus coopts market forces for a global transition away from fossil fuels. CBAM indicates one of the EU’s main strategic and economic security concerns, to be addressed at COP 29, namely the lack of a level playing field. Especially in relation to China and Russia, the EU is concerned that both do not commit to emissions reductions and climate funding at their proportionate level. Other security concerns that the EU will address at COP29 are the increase of extreme weather, destabilization in border regions leading to disruptions in supply lines, migration, and the opening of the Arctic as a terrain for Russian and Chinese projection of naval force.

Although the European Commission did not have a formal Council mandate in the run-up to the Copenhagen Summit/COP 15 or the Paris Agreement/COP 21, it acted on that assumption, nonetheless. This was because the Commission believed it could win a legal dispute over its (legal) competence to act on climate policy in the European Court of Justice, but politically does not dare to pick such a fight.