In the face of climate change, our planet is going through unprecedented changes, making international governance and cooperation on this issue a necessity. Recent studies indicate that the window to act to stay within the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement has narrowed, and that strong and urgent action is needed. Furthermore, there are indicators that Sweden will not reach its national emission reduction goal of net zero emissions by 2045. Many researchers point to the Paris Agreement's increased focus on non-state actors as contributors to climate change governance, and their ability to 'bridge the gap' between current actions and the actions needed to limit global warming. Businesses and the private sector are prominent non-state actors because of their financial and technological power. Hence, this study investigated how Swedish climate change initiatives that gather companies can assist with the transition to net zero emissions by 2045. Utilizing a mixed methods research design, this study has conducted both a survey as well as several in-depth interviews to investigate how climate change initiatives are perceived to affect member companies to reduce their emissions. It also explored the larger impact of climate change initiatives on non-members and society. The findings show that the main influence of climate change initiatives happens through lobbying. Lobbying is both described as one of the main reasons behind companies joining an initiative, as well as where climate change initiatives are perceived to have the largest impact. Furthermore, the study found that participation in initiatives may lead companies to reformulate their internal reduction targets into being more ambitious. It is, however, difficult to determine whether participation leads to actual emission reductions. Finally, climate change initiatives may also lead to impact further down the value chain of a company and facilitate knowledge sharing both internally and externally.

The current economic strategy of the European Union - the Europe 2020 Strategy - has defined five measurable Headline Targets to enhance economic growth and allowed the Member States to set their own national numerical values for these targets. This thesis analyses quality of this target setting process. First, it tries to figure out whether the targets have been set better than in the preceding Lisbon Strategy. Second, it examines whether the National Targets have been defined clearly and unequivocally. Third and the most important, based on original empirical analysis, the thesis evaluates whether the National Targets have been determined reasonably with respect to general capacities of individual European economies. The main results reveal that some learning from the Lisbon Strategy has been made, but the quality of the National Targets is insufficient and should be increased. JEL Classification E61, F55, O52 Keywords Europe 2020, strategy, European Union, national targets, empirical analysis, MULTIMOORA, Ratio System of MOORA, Reference point of MOORA, Full Multiplicative Form, Lisbon Strategy Author's e-mail PavlaBrizova@seznam.cz Supervisor's e-mail katerina.smidkova@cnb.cz