The Participation of the EU and its Member States in Multilateral Environmental Negotiations post Lisbon

Summary:

This article discusses the law and practice of EU participation in international multilateral environmental negotiations. It starts with focusing on the general rules and arrangements for determining a position and representing or expressing this position in the multilateral environmental forum. Subsequently, the particular rules and arrangements provided for negotiating legally binding and for establishing a position for acts having legal effect adopted by a body set up by such an agreement will be considered. The aim of the following section is to provide an answer to the practical question of how the EU, as a regional negotiating bloc, comes to a position and defends it during multilateral environmental negotiations, it will depart there from the traditional EU law approach that focuses on the relevant EU treaty provisions. The article seeks to demonstrate that in practice, the EU treaty provisions interact intensively with EU administrative law and practice, on the one hand, and Member States’ law and practice, on the other.