Fighting the Climate Change and Promoting Innovation: Is the EU Matching Words and Deeds?

Abstract

The European Union has long been at the forefront of fighting the climate change, avowed player in the arena and the pioneer in adopting the Emission Trading Scheme (Kyoto Protocol 2007), setting the example to be followed by the rest of the world (Liljeheden 2015). Recently, the Union played a significant role in hosting and eventually leading the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The event and the EU Member States' active participation provided for reaching of a historical Paris Agreement on Climate Change aiming at the reduction of global warming - which seems to have moved the world towards the brighter and greener future. Nevertheless, taking into account the EU's troubled record due to surplus allowances and recently due to the evident mismatch between the Agreement and the TTIP negotiations underway, its current status in the climate change game has been unclear and deserves to be reviewed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine whether the EU successfully matches words and deeds in the fight against the climate change and promoting innovation.