Shaping the Field: Normative Power Europe, the EU Climate Norm, and EU (Climate) Diplomacy

This chapter introduces the broader framework, the subjects, the concepts, and the notions around which this book evolves. It outlines the prominent theoretical framework of diffusing EU norms, namely Normative Power Europe (NPE); it also discusses alternative explanations to NPE, as the latter has not (as of yet) been widely applied to explain the European Union’s (EU) action towards other international organizations. Furthermore, the relation between NPE and the EU’s climate diplomacy is unfolded; the respective section begins with the evolution of tackling climate change as a distinct policy field in the European political arena and suggests that fighting climate change is indeed a European norm. It, then, reveals the distinct character of the EU’s diplomacy within the broader framework of the policymaking of the EU’s external action and continues by highlighting the saturation of the EU’s climate diplomacy with normative characteristics. The last section concludes the chapter and provides the way forward to the theoretical framework and the analysis of the book.