The European Union and Climate Change: Legal Aspects

Over the last fifty years, climate change has acquired a political and a legal dimension. In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty included combating climate change among the objectives of the European Union's international environmental policy, demonstrating the will of the EU to play a leading global role in this domain.
This thesis studies the development of the fight against climate change in EU law. In Part I we analyse European ambitions within the framework of international negotiations, where climate governance originally emerged. Then, we examine the European system of competence in order to better understand whether or not it actually serves as the most effective approach to tackling climate change issues. Part II concerns the implementation of the EU climate change policy. Here, we present its main instruments, i.e. the climate and energy package, and examine the mechanisms that the EU uses to give coherence to this cross-cutting policy and influence global climate action by way of internal measures taken.
Our analysis furthers the understanding of European contributions, both past and present, to the construction of effective international climate governance. Moreover, the subject of climate change, a major global challenge with an array of specific characteristics, provides us with a privileged point of view to examine several dynamics of the construction of European integration.