The European Union (EU) has a hugely important effect on the way in which environmental policies are framed and implemented not just in Europe but in many different parts of the world. After 40 years of continuous development, the environmental sector is one of the most successful and popular aspects of EU integration. However, as internal EU environmental policy reaches a stage of relatively maturity, attention is beginning to focus on how the EU can influence the governance of environmental issues not only inside but also outside of its borders. From this perspective the EU is increasingly engaging in a type of ‘external environmental governance’ in which it seeks to extend its environmental norms, rules and policies well beyond its legal jurisdiction through a mixture of persuasion, incentives and coercion. This ‘inside-out’ aspect of EU governance is not really new - the EU has long been exporting its innovative environmental policy ideas to the rest of the world. However, recent difficulties with the 'traditional' multilateral way of governing global environmental problems (especially after the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference) have given rise to a search for solutions that complement and support these efforts. At the same time, the EU is interacting with partners that are steadily increasing their capacity to adapt policy models to their own agenda. The rise of new actors in environmental governance has effects on the EU, which need to be understood in a reciprocal fashion. Against this backdrop, the objective of this proposal ‘European Union External Environmental Policy’ (EEEP) is to bring together top scholars of environmental governance as well as policy makers and civil society to explore how, where and to what effect the EU is embarking on new forms of external environmental governance. EEEP’s main activity is an international conference hosted by the University of Pretoria, South Africa.