Climate and trade diplomacy are the largest multilateral negotiation processes today, involving 196 and 164 countries respectively. Consequently, climate and trade policy are also the most internationalised areas of the European Union’s (EU) activity. Interestingly, both areas were developed in the EU outside the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. In pursuing climate and trade policy, the European Commission has developed special mechanisms and procedures that are tailored specifically to its needs. While it is extremely difficult to agree traditional foreign policy decisions within the EU, climate diplomacy, often agreed by majority voting, is gaining importance with each new term of the European Commission. This study discusses the origins of EU climate policy and tries to answer the question of why it has gone beyond the scope of the institutional structure prepared under treaties to conduct foreign policy. This study also presents Poland’s place in global climate negotiations. The authors try to show why and how the Polish administration should use the existing, practical division of competences in European climate policy and the potential accumulated in the organisation of three global climate summits in a fairly short period of time. They try to prove that climate policy is and will remain an effective tool for building the state’s position in international diplomacy.
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