Tough lessons in a new world order

After the EU’s disappointment over Copenhagen, what next on climate change?

The charge that the EU was sidelined in Copenhagen is unfair, but Europe still lacked diplomatic clout when it mattered. Judged on the outcome of the Copenhagen accord (see box), the EU was not the dealmaker it had aspired to be.

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EU dealmakers?

EU officials can at least claim that they initiated a process that saw 28 countries coming together in a final marathon of talks in a group that included France, Germany, the UK, the European Commission, Brazil, China, India, the US, Korea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and some tiny states on the frontline of climate change, including the Maldives. EU sources say that they were the first to propose this meeting, although, entertainingly, they differ as to whether the bright idea came from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France or the European Commission.

These EU officials, for understandable reasons, contest the significance of a meeting between the US, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, which is fabled as the meeting where the deal was done, without European involvement.

The final document was, said one senior Commission official, “not put together by five, it was put together by more than 30”.

The meeting of the five gained disproportionate significance “as a matter of American publicity,” says another EU source, who described it as “just one meeting among many held by all sides, including EU representatives”. EU sources emphasise that US President Barack Obama spoke to European leaders before and after this meeting.

The meeting of the five was important for the US to get concessions from China on the transparency of its emissions pledges, but its significance has been exaggerated: it did not tie up the whole deal.

The EU can take some credit for key numbers in the Copenhagen accord: the commitment to 2°C and 100 billion in climate aid for developing countries were made in Brussels – albeit the EU wanted this latter figure in euros not dollars. (At today’s exchange rates, the difference is a €30 billion per year loss for poor countries.)

But the hard truth is that European countries and the EU were powerless to get more ambitious targets to reduce emissions. The EU’s ‘lead-by-example’ policy led nowhere, suggesting that the EU needs to recalibrate its climate diplomacy, perhaps putting less emphasis on the US, and more on countries such as Australia and Japan with similar commitments to the EU.

Fact File

Key climate dates in 2010

õ 14-15 January: EU energy and environment ministers debate climate strategy, Seville
õ 31 January: UN deadline for industrialised countries to submit emission-reduction targets and other countries (excluding the least-developed and island states) to submit mitigation plans
õ 25-26 March: European Council, Valencia
õ 31 May-11 June: UN meeting, Bonn
õ 29 November-10 December: ‘COP 16’, (Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), Mexico

China

The EU must also rethink how it engages with China. As the world’s biggest emitter, China was able to veto what it did not want. “The Chinese were blocking left, right and centre,” said one EU participant. “This was the summit where we learnt that China is a superpower,” said another.

The UN climate conferences may appear like EU summits on a grand scale, with their set meetings and endless rounds of redrafting texts and bilateral negotiations. The EU is experienced at summitry, but Copenhagen taught the EU some tough lessons about a new world order.