Paper Titles & Abstracts

The European Union's (EU's) understanding of its own role in international relations is directly linked to its status as a different kind of actor and is largely based on its identity as norm-promoter. Widely studied, the EU has been labelled a normative power with empirical studies extending the normative examination to a large array of EU policies. Out of the most recent additions to the existing set of values, sustainable development triggered interest in the representation of the EU as a green normative actor. Whilst the connection with environmental and climate policies to deeper normative concerns can appear evident, with energy - which is instead traditionally associated to geopolitics and strategic interests - the normative connect seems at first more elusive. Yet energy cannot be separated from the two former policies to legitimately earn the denomination of green normative power. At the heart of the European project from the very beginnings, energy has gradually entered the realm of external relations to become part of the EU's relations with most third countries and with sustainability standing next to energy security and competitiveness as one of the EU's three priorities in the field of energy. With its recently strong green energy component, this paper suggests analysing the EU's energy cooperation with China to test to what extent the EU indeed is predisposed to act in a normative way in the area of energy and therefore giving credence to the EU as a green normative actor in international relations.