The Global Reach of EU Climate Change Law

Lezing

• Prof. Joanne Scott, University College London

Speaker Joanne Scott returns to the EU's 2008 Aviation Directive, which sparked extreme controversy internationally, and considers what the implications of the original responsibility frame might be when it comes to determining how far (geographically) EU climate change law ought to extend.

In 2008, the EU adopted a Directive to include international aviation in its emissions trading scheme. This provoked extreme controversy internationally and the EU was forced - at least temporarily - to back down. In proposing this Directive, the European Commission emphasized the importance of the EU taking responsibility for its aviation emissions.  Over time, however, this ethos of responsibility within the EU was eclipsed by a more instrumental logic of consequences. This had the result that the battle over the EU’s Aviation Directive was characterized by a kind of 'talking past each other'. The EU spoke the language of consequences while the EU’s opponents spoke a more normative language of appropriateness. This paper returns to the European Commission’s original responsibility frame and considers what the implications of this might be when it comes to determining how far (geographically) EU climate change law ought to extend. The paper rests upon a constructivist premise in that it accepts that the EU’s enactment of the Aviation Directive was a normatively significant event and that its success depends in significant part upon the EU’s capacity to persuade other states of the appropriateness of the implied normative change.

The Speaker

Joanne Scott was appointed as Professor of European Law in 2005, having previously been a Reader in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Her main areas of expertise are European Union Law and WTO Law. She has published extensively on law and new modes of governance, environmental law and policy and on the intersections between different sub-national, national and international legal orders. She was recently awarded a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for her research on the global reach of EU climate change law (2012-2014). She was a member of the UCL/Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change and of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution(2009-2011). Joanne was awarded as EPSRC grant as part of an inter-disciplinary team investigating the climate change dimensions of shipping. 

She has been a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School and was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012 and as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2013. 

Attendance

Attendance is free of charge, but due to limited room capacity subject to registration. Please send an email to Angela Moisl, a.moisl@uva.nl, to register for this event.

Gepubliceerd door  ACELG