Ego vs Alter: internal and external perceptions of the EU’s role in global environmental negotiations
(2020) Online-Workshop: EU as a global actor in sustainability policy — Location: Online (27.May.2020)
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- Authors
Pipart, Frauke 
- Abstract
- This paper compares how participants of contemporary international environmental negotiations from the EU and its member states perceive the EU’s role to how participants from non-EU countries see the EU. Three dimensions of the EU’s role are assessed: the EU’s ambition, diplomatic activity and influence. Countering the climate-bias in the literature, the EU’s role in three UN-wide environmental fora is studied: the regimes on chemical governance (i.e. the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions), the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Environment Assembly. The paper presents new and original data collected through an online survey with delegates from all countries who participated in the negotiations in the three fora in the period 2018-2019. The ego perception of delegates from EU institutions and EU member states is compared with the alter view of delegates from third countries. The paper finds that ego and alter perceptions of the EU’s role in international environmental fora correspond to a large extent. Nonetheless, EU delegates tend to describe the EU more often as the most ambitious and active actor than non-EU delegates do. However, we do not observe a similar tendency for the EU’s influence, as ego and alter perceptions of whether the EU is the most influential actor are largely similar. Overall, we find that the EU is a highly ambitious, active and influential actor in global environmental negotiations – both in the eyes of the EU and in the eyes of its negotiation partners. As there are no major differences between the ego and the alter perspective, our results suggest that EU-centric assessments are still valid in order to study the EU’s role in international environmental negotiations.
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Citations
Pipart, F., & Delreux, T. (2020). Ego vs Alter: internal and external perceptions of the EU’s role in global environmental negotiations. Online-Workshop: EU as a global actor in sustainability policy, Online. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/23733