The EU’s Negotiating Activity Across the International Regime Complex on Climate Change: The Case of the International Maritime Organization’s Climate Change Strategy for Shipping

The EU regularly participates in a number of international fora related to climate change, each with its own norms, functional scope and membership (e.g. UNFCCC, G20, Montreal Protocol, International Maritime Organization [IMO]). Collectively, these fora make up the international regime complex on climate change. Although considerable attention has been paid to the EU’s role within the UNFCCC, there has been significantly less focus on if and how the EU’s negotiation activities are connected across the fora of the broader regime complex. This paper extends the scope of study of the EU’s climate diplomacy to the entirety of the regime complex. It addresses the following two research questions: Is the EU’s diplomacy in one forum connected to its activity in the other fora of the international regime complex on climate change? and If so, how is the EU’s diplomacy in one forum connected to its activity in the other fora of the complex? The paper conceptualises expected types of connections between the fora: agenda shaping, coalition building, coalition modification, forum shopping, issue linkage, and negotiation linkage. It then uses the case study of the IMO’s highly-anticipated 2018 adoption of the Initial Strategy on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships to examine whether and how the connection types were employed by the EU. While we find evidence that the EU’s diplomacy in the IMO was connected to other fora in the complex, the extent to which the connections were actually employed was limited. This nonetheless serves as evidence of connected, cross-fora diplomatic activity. As for the types of connections, we note the presence of two types: agenda shaping and coalition modification. Our findings underscore the need for more case studies to further develop this conceptualisation of the connection types and EU climate diplomacy