| Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, Global Public Policy

Europe’s climate policy calls for an EU Green Deal diplomacy

In an OpEd for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, Prof. Andreas Goldthau argues that Europe’s ambitious decarbonization policies need to be flanked by a determined foreign energy policy. In the piece, which appeared on November 7 2021 in the SZ Forum, he calls for a joined-up approach linking security, climate, and development policies.

Windmill
© Böckel, M. (2021): Pixaby.com

As the new German government is set to put climate change high up on its policy agenda, it will be determined to prove that the European Green Deal indeed constitutes a sustainable growth model. However, the EU going low carbon will have an external impact, as oil revenues wither away for petrostates and access to climate finance and technology is lopsided across the globe. Germany, therefore, needs to push for a variable EU Green Deal diplomacy at the European level.

Such a foreign policy will have to comprise three elements: first, it needs to address the possible security effects of going low carbon; second, it must align foreign, climate and development policy; and third, it will have to support climate finance and technology transfer to non-OECD nations struggling to go green.