The EU has become an important leader in international environmental affairs, which actively seeks to influence the environmental policies of states beyond its borders. In this context, attention has focussed on how the EU shapes the environmental policy arrangements of the states located in its close neighbourhood. Yet the EU has also sought to export its environmental policies to a more global level. Multilateral environmental agreements drawing on the EU’s preferences are an important instrument for this purpose. In this paper we explore the effectiveness of the EU’s external environmental governance once we move beyond the neighbourhood. When do states follow the European lead in international environmental affairs? Which domestic factors determine the degree of EU-induced environmental policy change? To address these questions, we concentrate on 17 Latin American countries’ ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity between 1992 and 2011. Both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol are strongly influenced and promoted by the EU, thus providing an excellent empirical basis for assessing the EU’s external environmental governance. Focusing empirically on biosafety policies in Latin America has the analytical advantage of representing an unlikely case of effective EU external environmental governance since this region has traditionally been heavily influenced by the United States, which is neither a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity nor to the Cartagena Protocol. Thus, if we are able to identify an EU effect on biosafety policies in this region, this must be considered a powerful case of EU external environmental governance.
