The EU’s Withering Leadership Role in Global Climate Governance: A Two-Level Game Analysis

The EU played a crucial leadership role in making the Kyoto Protocol enter into force after the US withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol at the beginning of the early 21st century. However, the EU’s leadership in global climate governance has gradually been withering, which can be largely reflected by its dwindling role in shaping the final outcomes of the Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Specifically, the EU played a marginal role in reaching the Paris Agreement and its entry into force. Furthermore, the EU has no longer had the capability to prevent its unfavored mitigation policy measures from being inked in the final texts of COPs, such as “phase-down” rather than “phase-out” fossil fuels at COP26 and nuclear energy being officially adopted as a climate mitigation technology at COP28. The main reason for the EU’s such a withering leadership role in global climate governance can be explained by the two-level game theory. At the international level, rising powers such as China and India have continued to closely collaborate with each other, together with other rising powers such as Brazil and South Africa, in shaping their preferred outcomes of the COPs. Moreover, the existing dominant power, i.e., the United States, under the Democratic Party administrations, continued to play a leadership role in COPs and shape the outcomes of the COPs based on its own policy preferences. At the EU’s “domestic” level, the EU's 27 member states have divergent policy preferences over energy and climate change. Moreover, the EU’s energy crisis in the 2020s, caused largely by its extreme energy transition policies and exacerbated by the Russo-Ukraine War, has significantly reduced the EU’s credibility and reputation as a leader in global climate governance.