Surveying the role of the European Union (EU) in relation to climate change policy is no easy task. Both have been in the course of evolution for the past several decades. Worries about the risks posed by climate change date back some thirty years within the Union, as the contributors to this important volume show. They distinguish a number of main phases of policy development, beginning in the 1980s, the time at which initial anxieties, prompted by scientific findings, emerged. Over that period, however, the EU itself changed massively, from a group of nine nations to one incorporating twenty-seven Member States.

These changes have been very mixed in their consequences. The EU countries now have a population of some 480 million, and the Union wields considerable economic might. It stretches almost to the borders of Russia and adjoins the Middle East. A number of countries at the margins of the EU have declared their intention to seek to join up, including Turkey, which has formally been recognised as an accession country. Yet enlargement has been far from plain sailing. Rules and procedures of governance designed for a small number of Member States have come under great strain.

Decision-making has become correspondingly more difficult and cumbersome. New divisions among Member States have opened up: for example, the former Eastern European countries mostly have a more fearful and jaundiced view of Russia than those from what used to be Western Europe.