This commentary reviews the wider context of the forthcoming negotiations on a comprehensive global climate change agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to take place in Paris in December 2015. It looks not only at the geopolitical shifts that have taken place on the road to Paris, but also at the interests of the EU both as far as its domestic climate policy is concerned, as well as its role as a diplomatic ‘soft power’.
The paper represents the joint vision of the members of the EU Think Tank Platform for Paris 2015 (TT2015) of why the COP21 in Paris is important to the EU. The Platform brings together six of the leading EU thinks tanks (CEPS, IDDRI, IES-VUB, SWP, PISM and E3G), active in the area of climate change policy, in their desire to catalyse and contribute to the debate in the EU on its strategy and positioning in the 2015 negotiations. More information available on the website: http://www.ttc2015.com/
The lead author is Andrei Marcu, Senior Advisor and Head of the CEPS Carbon Market Forum and Deputy Director of the Energy Climate House at CEPS. Alexandra Deprez (IDDRI), Susanne Dröge (SWP), Liz Gallagher (E3G), Arthur Gradziuk (PISM), Sebastian Oberthür (IES) and Thomas Spencer (IDDRI) served as contributing authors.