EU Climate Change Policy and Environmental Leadership - From COP15 to COP21

The aim of this article is to explain the European Union climate change policy after 2020 and it’s common position at COP21 of FCCC, and to examine the EU environmental leadership in the climate change negotiations. Since the EU leadership at COP15 had been ineffective because of mainly geopolitical features in the negotiation, the EU had to consider what they should do to achieve an agreement to save the earth. The EU had continued to show the leadership by example; Environment Council adopted a 2020-30 framework for climate and energy policy and set out the EU position for the Paris climate conference in advance, pressing for a global, fair, ambitious and legally binding international treaty. And it also had tried to build bridges between big emitters of greenhouse gases and created a coalition among AOSIS, African countries and the EU. Finally the EU played a key role in brokering the agreement at COP21, where 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. It is recognized here that the mode of EU environmental leadership at COP21 was different from that at COP15