Persistent informality: preparing the EU’s input into international climate negotiations
研究了欧盟自2004年起引入的非正式谈判准备系统如何形成、演变并持续二十多年，解释了效率、权力竞争和规范文化等驱动因素的作用，对理解欧盟气候外交机制有参考价值。
In 2004 a largely informal system for preparing the European Union’s (EU’s) input into and representation at the international climate change negotiations was introduced. This system has persisted largely unchanged for over two decades. At its core are lead negotiators and issue leaders who remain in place beyond the six-monthly rotating EU Presidency. They are recruited from both the Member States and the Commission on the basis of their professional aptitude. Using theoretical approaches which focus on efficiency, power/competition and norms/culture as core drivers for informal governance in the EU, this paper explains how this informal system has emerged and evolved as well as why it has persisted without major modifications over two decades. Although efficiency has been a major driver, a wider consensus norm/culture within the EU constituted an essential precondition for the establishment of the informal lead negotiator/issue leader arrangement and constrained the impact of power and competition both between and within the Member States and the Commission, thus reducing the risk of inter– and intra-institutional turf battles.