How the EU banished its climate demons and salvaged a weak COP30 deal

BELÉM, Brazil — The European Union came into this year’s COP30 summit hoping to exorcise some of its climate demons. It did, to a degree — then found new ones. 

After a year of infighting that ended in a last-minute deal on new pollution-cutting targets just before the annual U.N. conference began, the EU sought to make the case for greater global efforts to fight climate change. 

But in Belém, the Amazonian host city of COP30, the 27-country bloc was confronted with a stark geopolitical reality. In the absence of the United States, which at past conferences worked with the Europeans to push for more climate action, the EU struggled to fight against the combined weight of China, India, Saudi Arabia and other rising economic powers. 

“We’re living through complicated geopolitical times. So there is intrinsic value, no matter how difficult, to seek to come together,” EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra told reporters after the bloc decided not to oppose the final conference agreement. 

“We’re not going to hide the fact we would have preferred to have more,” he said. “And yet the world is what it is, the conference is what it is, and we do think this on balance is a step in the right direction.” 

The end result was not what the EU had fought for — though the bloc eked out a handful of concessions after threatening to veto the deal on Friday. 

To appease the EU, as well as a small group of other holdouts such as the United Kingdom and Colombia, the Brazilian presidency of COP30 tweaked its draft deal to affirm a previous agreement on transitioning away from fossil fuels and offered to start a discussion on how to achieve that deal over the next year. 

A European walkout was on the cards until just after dawn on the final morning. “It was on the edge for us at times during the night — and for the EU — because we just thought actually we’ve got to be able to look people in the eye,” said U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.

Developed countries also won changes to a proposal to triple financing for poorer countries to prepare for climate disasters, which will now be provided later than developing nations wanted and draw funds from sources beyond rich countries’ budgets. 

Still, the Europeans had wanted to leave Brazil with a much larger signal, laying out a clear path away from fossil fuels. 

But they failed to build an alliance strong enough to counter the Saudi-led opposition — an effort hampered by geopolitical headwinds as well as internal divisions that had followed the EU from Brussels all the way to Belém. 

Lingering divisions 

Divisions over climate change that had dogged the EU throughout the year did affect the bloc’s negotiations. Until Friday morning, hours before the conference was scheduled to end, the EU was forced to take a back seat each time countries from across the globe came together to urge greater ambition. 

A European walkout was on the cards until just after dawn on the final morning. “It was on the edge for us at times during the night — and for the EU,” confirmed U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. | Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images

On Tuesday, the EU was absent from an 82-country call spearheaded by Colombia to draw up a “roadmap” to deliver on the earlier agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Many of the bloc’s governments individually backed the move, but two diplomats said Italy and Poland could not support the agreement at the time, leaving the EU as a whole unable to throw its weight behind the call. The bloc eventually proposed its own version. 

Similarly, the EU was not among the signatories on Thursday when a coalition of 29 countries sent a letter to the Brazilian COP30 presidency to complain that a draft proposal in the works did not contain a reference to the roadmap or other efforts. 

The majority of the bloc’s governments backed the missive, but 10 EU countries — including Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia — did not.

The split broadly reflected the divisions that had plagued the EU’s climate politics for much of this year. 

The bloc spent the past few months trying to agree on a pair of new targets to reduce emissions, a fractious process that met with resistance from countries concerned about the impact of green efforts on their domestic industries. 

The 27 governments eventually struck a deal on the eve of COP30, setting new goals that were softer than initially envisaged but nevertheless rank among the world’s most ambitious. 

Yet by that point, it was far too late for the EU to leverage its targets and pressure other big emitters, such as China, into stepping up their efforts. (Beijing’s envoy suggested in an interview with POLITICO that if the bloc wanted to be a climate leader, the EU needed to sort out its internal divisions.) 

“They used to be more active, more vocal. It feels like their pendulum swing at home is having an impact,” one Latin American negotiator said. “They keep their positions, no backtracking, but it doesn’t feel as strong anymore. Like the passion is gone.” 

Isolated in Belém

Yet when all countries were presented with the Brazilian presidency’s draft deal on Friday morning, the EU decided to take a stand. 

Three European diplomats said the entire bloc was united in fury at the text — with everyone from the most climate-ambitious nations such as Denmark to laggards such as Poland fuming about weak language on cutting emissions and crossed red lines on finance. 

All ministers were asked to get on the phone to their capitals to request permission to veto a deal if necessary, four diplomats said. Hoekstra told a gathering convened by the Brazilians: “Under no circumstances are we going to accept this.” 

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago. To appease the EU, the U.K., Colombia and others, the Brazilian presidency of COP30 tweaked its draft deal on fossil fuels. | Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images

“We stayed united until the end, despite the fact that of course we all had differences in our assessment of the overall situation here,” said Monique Barbut, France’s ecological transition minister. 

The strength of the EU delegation’s message, however, was somewhat undercut by their own leader: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Speaking around the same time at the G20 in South Africa, von der Leyen asserted: “We are not fighting fossil fuels, we are fighting the emissions from fossil fuels.”

“She’s a star in undermining her own negotiators during COP,” one EU diplomat complained. 

But the EU also faced a new geopolitical reality in Belém. 

German Climate Minister Carsten Schneider on Saturday spoke of a “new world order” that the EU would need to get used to. “Something has changed, and that has become very apparent here.” 

Throughout the two weeks, European diplomats complained bitterly about the tactics employed by Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers, which fiercely opposed any call to tackle fossil fuels. 

Riyadh and its allies, they said, were emboldened by Washington’s absence and constantly took the floor in meetings to derail the talks. Notes from a closed-door meeting shared with POLITICO also show that Saudi Arabia sought to bash the bloc for imposing carbon tariffs. 

“We faced a very strong petro-industry… which organised a blocking majority here against any progress,” Schneider said. 

The bloc was frustrated about what they saw as Brazil pandering to its BRICS allies — China, India, South Africa and other emerging economies — in walking right over the EU’s red lines on providing climate aid and pushing the bloc into uncomfortable discussions on trade measures. 

But they also left feeling abandoned by traditional allies, such as small island states, that they had counted on to back their push for more climate action. In the end, the Europeans and a handful of Latin American countries stood alone. 

“We need to do some real thinking about what the EU’s role in these global talks is,” one senior European negotiator said. “We underestimated the BRICS and overestimated our strength a little bit — and we definitely overestimated the unity of those we consider our allies.”