European leadership before, during and after the Paris Climate Conference

The 2015 Paris climate conference was heralded as a potential critical juncture for global climate policy, and the resultant Paris Agreement has been described as a diplomatic success story. During the 2000s, the EU had enjoyed a reputation as a climate leader, which by the early 2010s had morphed into a ‘leadiator’ role. How do we categorise and explain the EU’s polycentric leadership performance before, during and after Paris? By applying Liefferink and Wurzel’s (2017) typology of leaders and pioneers, we analyse the leadership credentials of the EU at the Paris climate conference, and identify key internal actors that played important roles in shaping this outcome. To do so, we contextualise the EU’s climate target – its ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ – by comparing it against every other pledge submitted to the Paris conference. We find that the EU assumed the role of a conditional pusher at the negotiations, whilst exhibiting the characteristics of structural, entrepreneurial, and intentional exemplary leadership. However, although the EU could point to examples of leadership that were achieved at the negotiations – for example, co-creating the ‘High Ambition Coalition’ – the conference did not represent a return of the EU to its past climate leadership successes.