Location
Room 108
Start Date
4-7-2012 10:15 AM
End Date
4-7-2012 12:00 PM
Description
The European Union (EU) and its legal system have traditionally been at the forefront of the fight against anthropogenic climate change at the global level. This is particularly true today, when the international community is facing one of the most difficult passages of all times in this respect, due to the well-known difficulty in agreeing on a binding legal text to be applied once the first reference period established by the Kyoto Protocol will expire at the end of this year.
The above stalemate has caused individual States to resort to unilateralism, a move that in itself represents a regression from the Kyoto regime, whose main merit had been the creation of a common (although differentiated) legal framework consisting, inter alia, of a series of provisions requiring contracting parties to limit their emissions of certain greenhouse gases from a defined range of human activities over a given period of time.
The paper aims at focusing on the European way to unilateralism as represented, for example, by the so-called “effort sharing decision” of 2009 (406/2009/EC of 23 April 2009), pursuant to which, on the one hand, the emission reduction objectives imposed on EU Member States have been increased whilst, on the other hand, the scope of application of such objectives has been widened so as to include more climate-adverse substances and a greater number of economic activities, comprising for the first time a series of “small” emitters.
With an even more recent move, EU climate law appears to have taken an extraterritorial turn too. Reference has especially to be made to the “clean skies” judgment rendered by the European Court of Justice on 21 December 2011 (case C-366/10), whereby – albeit without explicitly mentioning the extraterritorial implications of its ruling – the Court has confirmed the applicability of the European emission trading scheme to the international operations of North American air carriers when they have European airports as points of arrival or departure of their flights.
The paper will conclude that, since in today’s globalized world Europe remains an important player, both politically and economically, a mixture of unilateral and extraterritorial measures, such as the ones briefly described above, may have an important role to play, not only in bringing climate change negotiations back on track, but also as a platform towards the establishment of new international standards to be agreed by Europe’s major strategic and commercial partners, in Asia as well as in North and South America.
Of course, unilateral and extraterritorial actions by themselves will never be sufficient to achieve such a goal, and a wide range of arguments (including trade-related ones) will have to be tabled and discussed to that effect. The experience shows, however, that in the past Europe has been able to promote the development of global standards in areas such as the preservation of the marine environment and the protection of the ozone layer also by providing autonomous solutions that have prompted, in turn, the adoption of appropriate international accords.
* Associate Professor of International Law, University of Genoa Faculty o Law (Italy); Dott. Ric., University of Milan; LL.M., Georgetown University Law Centre; LL.M. University of London; Member, IUCN Commission on Environmental Law
Presentation
Included in
EU Climate Law & Practice at the End of the Kyoto Era: Unilateralism, Extraterritoriality and the Future of Global Climate Change Governance
Room 108
The European Union (EU) and its legal system have traditionally been at the forefront of the fight against anthropogenic climate change at the global level. This is particularly true today, when the international community is facing one of the most difficult passages of all times in this respect, due to the well-known difficulty in agreeing on a binding legal text to be applied once the first reference period established by the Kyoto Protocol will expire at the end of this year.
The above stalemate has caused individual States to resort to unilateralism, a move that in itself represents a regression from the Kyoto regime, whose main merit had been the creation of a common (although differentiated) legal framework consisting, inter alia, of a series of provisions requiring contracting parties to limit their emissions of certain greenhouse gases from a defined range of human activities over a given period of time.
The paper aims at focusing on the European way to unilateralism as represented, for example, by the so-called “effort sharing decision” of 2009 (406/2009/EC of 23 April 2009), pursuant to which, on the one hand, the emission reduction objectives imposed on EU Member States have been increased whilst, on the other hand, the scope of application of such objectives has been widened so as to include more climate-adverse substances and a greater number of economic activities, comprising for the first time a series of “small” emitters.
With an even more recent move, EU climate law appears to have taken an extraterritorial turn too. Reference has especially to be made to the “clean skies” judgment rendered by the European Court of Justice on 21 December 2011 (case C-366/10), whereby – albeit without explicitly mentioning the extraterritorial implications of its ruling – the Court has confirmed the applicability of the European emission trading scheme to the international operations of North American air carriers when they have European airports as points of arrival or departure of their flights.
The paper will conclude that, since in today’s globalized world Europe remains an important player, both politically and economically, a mixture of unilateral and extraterritorial measures, such as the ones briefly described above, may have an important role to play, not only in bringing climate change negotiations back on track, but also as a platform towards the establishment of new international standards to be agreed by Europe’s major strategic and commercial partners, in Asia as well as in North and South America.
Of course, unilateral and extraterritorial actions by themselves will never be sufficient to achieve such a goal, and a wide range of arguments (including trade-related ones) will have to be tabled and discussed to that effect. The experience shows, however, that in the past Europe has been able to promote the development of global standards in areas such as the preservation of the marine environment and the protection of the ozone layer also by providing autonomous solutions that have prompted, in turn, the adoption of appropriate international accords.
* Associate Professor of International Law, University of Genoa Faculty o Law (Italy); Dott. Ric., University of Milan; LL.M., Georgetown University Law Centre; LL.M. University of London; Member, IUCN Commission on Environmental Law