| The question of how to share the costs of the measures to be taken against global warming is one of the most controversial questions in the international climate policy debate, and is, as yet, unsettled. The burden sharing agreement (BSA) reached by EU Member States is a rare example of a successful (regional) burden sharing scheme. The agreement was reached in two stages in March 1997 (pre-Kyoto) and in the Spring of 1998 (post-Kyoto). This paper analyses, from a political economy perspective, the factors which facilitated burden sharing within the EU and which determined the particular sharing rule adopted. Three "stylised facts" emerge from the study. First, countries with high national targets, which were assigned relatively large shares in the... |
