Soft to be Strong: The use of bilateral soft-law in the EU Environmental External Action

Since its attribution as an external power in the late 1980s, the EU has gradually developed a mature external environmental policy using a plethora of multilateral and bilateral instruments with third countries and international organizations. Among them, «soft law» represents an important tool. The EU institutions responsible for external relations have been increasingly resorting to international soft law instruments for the last decades. They seem to play a crucial role, particularly in politically sensitive and technically complex areas, especially in the framework of the environmental crisis. However, the use of soft law raises many questions regarding both its efficiency and effectiveness to pursue the EU external relations goals compared to traditional tools of international «hard law». Moreover, soft law instruments have been largely criticized for by-passing the principles at the basis of the EU Treaties. In light of the above, this paper wishes to answer the following research question: is soft law suitable to pursue EU external relations goals dealing with energy and the environment?