Climate diplomacy within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a unique negotiation arena due to the practical and far-reaching implications of climate action, the broadest possible national representation, and the unprecedented time horizon of the Convention’s operation. Therefore, assessing the current status and prospects of climate leadership requires analyzing climate negotiations from the perspective of “small steps” and those aspects of international climate cooperation on issues which demand deep expertise and synchronized work at the technical level. At the annual Climate Conferences of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COPs), there is a growing tension with regard to raising the ambition of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and conducting the Global Stocktake (GST). A source of this tension is the increasing activity of developing countries. Their interests– overcoming the consequences of climate change, financing the energy transition, and the risks of relocating carbon-intensive industries – align with common interests. However, the search for compromise positions slows down the negotiation process. As a result, a false impression of a lack of leadership in international climate negotiations is formed. The article aims to identify the direction of transformation and the features of EU climate leadership based on classical typologies of political leadership, examine the EU’s role in the UNFCCC process, and characterize the prospects for the united Europe’s leadership in climate diplomacy. Therefore, the article examines the participation of the EU as a party to the UNFCCC at COPs to consider the prospects of climate leadership. It reviews the main negotiating positions of the EU and the outcomes of conferences that influenced the initial dynamics of climate diplomacy (in 1997, 2009, 2011, and 2015) as well as the four most recent conferences that demonstrate current trends and the EU’s role as an active participant in negotiations (2021–2025). The results show that the EU’s climate diplomacy exhibits characteristics of all four types of leadership. Ideational leadership is evident in its consistent promotion of scientifically grounded climate targets in international negotiations; directional leadership in the EU’s pioneering implementation of UNFCCC mechanisms for energy transition in its internal policy; structural leadership in its aspiration to create a transparent and effective climate infrastructure; and instrumental leadership in combining financial, regulatory, and diplomatic levers to accelerate the global climate transition.
Rudyk et al. (2025) studied this question.