EU Climate Policy under the Paris Agreement

Abstract

The European Union has long sought to play a leadership role in the international response to climate change. As part of the “European Green Deal”, it announced new wide-ranging plans to step up its ambition, and in December 2020 updated its mitigation target under the Paris Agreement to an at-least 55 per cent reduction by 2030 compared to the 1990 level. In this article, I provide a legal analysis of the new EU climate change policy as outlined in the European Commission’s Stepping Up Europe’s 2030 Climate Ambition (September 2020) in light of the Paris Agreement itself and other norms of international environmental law. I find that the European Union provides a degree of leadership in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, but that there are also areas of concern, in particular the missing notification of member states’ individual emission levels as part of a joint ndc under Article 4 of the Paris Agreement.