BRUSSELS — The European Union will “think twice” before considering backing weak agreements at COP climate summits in the future, a Polish negotiator has warned. At this year’s COP30 climate conference in Brazil, the EU struggled to find allies to push for more ambitious climate action, and at one point threatened to walk away without signing a deal. The United States, its historical partner, was notably absent from the meeting. That’s a lesson learned, according to Katarzyna Wrona, Poland’s negotiator in the talks, who was also part of the EU’s delegation at the summit. “This COP happened in a very difficult geopolitical situation … We felt a very strong pressure from emerging economies but also from other parties, on financing, on trade,” she said at POLITICO’s Sustainable Future Summit. And “we had to really think very carefully whether we were in a position to support [the final deal], and we did, for the sake of multilateralism,” she added. “But I’m not sure … that the EU will be ready to take [this position] in the future,” Wrona warned. “Because something has changed, and we will surely think twice before we evaluate a deal that does not really bring much in terms of following up on the commitments that were undertaken,” she said. Also speaking on the panel, Elif Gökçe Öz, environmental counsellor at the permanent delegation of Turkey to the EU, said it would “be important for the EU … to forge alternative alliances in the COP negotiation process,” as global power dynamics shift. Wrona replied that the EU is “ready to work” with those that show ambition to reduce their emissions. “But it has to be very clearly … that the support is not limitless and it’s not unconditional,” she added.

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.” 

SÃO PAULO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t even at the United Nations climate talks yet — but he’s already getting bombarded with meeting requests. Newsom kicked off his trip to Brazil 1,800 miles south of the Amazonian city of Belém that’s hosting this year’s international gathering, talking to Brazilian and American financiers at an investors’ summit in São Paulo. His first question from the Brazilian press on Monday, fresh off last week’s redistricting victory: whether he would run for president (“Nothing else matters but 2026 and taking back the House of Representatives,” he said). Newsom couldn’t walk halfway down a hallway without fielding a meeting request from CEOs and NGOs — or a selfie request. One Brazilian picture-taker had him repeat the Portuguese word for “Let’s go”: “Vamos.” His remarks to investors at the Milken Global Investors’ Symposium sounded more like a campaign rally than a business speech. “We have seen this complete reversal of so much of the progress that the Biden administration made,” he said. “What Trump is doing is unprecedented in American history … This should not be through the lens or prism of red, in American vernacular, versus blue.” Then he held an hour-long roundtable meeting with representatives from major investment funds, philanthropies, development banks and energy leaders, who he said pushed him to bolster economic ties in existing voluntary agreements with Brazilian governments. Newsom told POLITICO he and his team were getting a “disproportionate number of calls” to meet on the sidelines of the talks, where the U.S. government’s delegation numbers zero (“not even a note taker,” Newsom said.) “We’re at peak influence because of the flatness of the surrounding terrain with the Trump administration and all the anxiety,” Newsom said in an interview in São Paulo. Newsom is playing a well-rehearsed role for California, which has staked out a leading role in international climate diplomacy for decades under both Democratic and Republican governors, including during Trump’s first term. The Trump administration’s dismantling of climate policies to favor oil and gas interests only give California more space to fill, said former Gov. Jerry Brown, who got a hero’s welcome himself at the United Nations climate talks in 2017, the first year of Trump 1.0. “Trump, he’s saying one thing,” Brown said in an interview. “Newsom is saying something else, very important.” The impact, he said, will be determined in Belém. “That’s why it’s exciting. There’s not an answer yet.” That gives Newsom an opening — and a risk. Where Brown led a coalition of states eager to demonstrate continued commitment on climate in Trump’s first term, Newsom will arrive in Belém, near the mouth of the Amazon River, at a time when U.S. politics are tilting rightward and even Democrats are pulling back on embracing climate policies. And there’s little Newsom’s team, which includes ex-State Department climate negotiators, can actually do in the closed-door talks reserved for countries. But the governor’s goal is to influence from just outside the door. “We’re in every room, because California has been the inspiration for a lot of these jurisdictions,” he told POLITICO. Newsom’s heading next to Belém, where he’s scheduled to meet with other subnational leaders and renew environmental pacts with other countries and states — starting on Tuesday with the environment ministers from Germany and the German state of Baden-Württemburg, which Brown first partnered with to promote the soft power of subnational governments during Trump’s first term. Newsom said he would also meet with representatives from Chile. He’s also expected to give plenary remarks at the UN. After that, he’ll head deeper into the Amazon rainforest to meet with Indigenous communities on conservation — one of the goals of the Brazilian organizers of the climate talks. Newsom said he saw the visit to the Amazon as a spiritual opportunity. “It connects us to our creator,” he said. “It connects us to thousands and thousands of generations.”

BRUSSELS — For decades, the European Union has relied on the United States to act as shock absorber and chief powerbroker at global climate talks. No longer.  At the COP30 conference starting in Brazil on Monday, the unprecedented absence of its longtime ally leaves the 27-country union bearing the brunt of demands and pressures leveled at rich countries — an awkward role for the EU to take on.  In theory, the EU is the obvious candidate to step into the leadership vacuum left by the U.S. following President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the summit. After all, its climate targets and concrete policies rank among the most ambitious in the world. Yet the bloc, increasingly steeped in doubts about its domestic green transition and short on diplomatic heft, arrives in Belém ill-equipped for the job.  At home, faced with a confident far right and struggling industrial sectors campaigning to hit the brakes on climate action, European governments are weakening green policies and squabbling over the pace of decarbonization.  At COP30, the EU seeks to cajole other countries into upping their ambitions and agree a joint statement pledging to step up pollution cuts, hoping to send a message to the Trump administration that its fossil fuel revivalism leaves the U.S. isolated.  That contrast is already opening the EU to charges of hypocrisy, complicating its efforts to convince big polluters such as China and India to commit to more climate action in Belém.  The bloc’s top climate officials don’t see a contradiction, pointing out that the EU remains not only committed to steep pollution cuts but is on track to meet its targets.  “We are doubling down on that leadership role,” the European Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra insisted in an interview this week after EU governments signed off on a much delayed and weaker-than-expected new climate target required for this COP.  “Are there dubious actors that always will try to shift the blame on the Europeans? Of course,” he said. “But this doesn’t hinder us.”  The absence of the U.S. will also expose the EU to heightened pressure on thorny issues, such as financing and trade, that tend to pit rich nations against developing countries.  The Americans, a senior EU climate negotiator acknowledged, “are no longer there to deflect attacks” on the negotiation stance of rich countries, putting the bloc in an “uncomfortable” position. “Being the bad cop isn’t a role that comes naturally to the EU.”  Donald Trump derided the annual United Nations talks and withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement in his first term as president. | Jim Watson/Getty Images On top of that, the EU is heading into COP30 lacking experienced political negotiators, who take over the talks in the second week of the conference. Prominent figures such as German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan have changed jobs or were ousted in elections over the past year. In Belém, “there absolutely has to be a strong response” to Trump and new findings showing the world remains far off track to comply with the Paris climate accord, the negotiator said. “But the EU is in a delicate position in terms of calling for that, given all this.”  THE CHINA FACTOR Trump derided the annual United Nations talks and withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement in his first term as president. But due to a quirk in the 2015 climate accord, the U.S. didn’t actually leave until the day after Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.  During Trump’s entire first term, U.S. negotiators continued to hold a prominent role alongside the Europeans, fighting for global climate rules that would apply as strongly to China as to wealthy countries. On its own, the EU has struggled to continue that fight.  Pushing China won’t be the bloc’s only challenge at this COP. India and host Brazil are also seeking to pressure the EU over trade measures; major polluters oppose the bloc’s campaign for a joint declaration promising more pollution cuts; and countries that share the EU’s desire for an ambitious outcome may give the bloc flak for wavering on its green commitments. But the bloc’s approach to China, more than anything, lays bare its difficulties in stepping up and out of Washington’s shadow. Beijing in September promised to cut its world-leading levels of pollution between 7 percent and 10 percent until 2035, compared to an undefined peak that may have occurred this year. It’s China’s first major emissions-slashing goal, but far below what experts said was feasible.  The EU, which was expecting a Chinese target of around 30 percent, took the announcement badly. Hoekstra denounced it as “clearly disappointing” — comments that prompted an unusual rebuke from the Chinese, who complained of “double standards” and warned his public criticism “undermines the atmosphere of cooperation.” Some argue this is the EU stepping up. “We used to have the U.S. acting as the bad cop and the EU acting as the good cop, so we as the EU have to learn to be both bad and good cop,” said a second EU negotiator. “So politicians may show outrage to push China, and on the diplomatic level we can work with China in making the COP a success.”  Others criticized Hoekstra’s response. “I think it’s counterproductive,” said Cecilia Trasi, a policy advisor at the Italian ECCO think tank. During her recent trip to China, “the common refrain,” including in conversations with officials, “was the EU is hypocritical, and it’s not doing enough to acknowledge the progress that China has made.” New targets for 2035, required from every Paris Agreement signatory, are central to this year’s climate conference.  The EU missed the United Nations’ September deadline for the targets as its governments were unable to agree. The bloc eventually decided on an emissions cut of between 66.3 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels — instead of the fixed 72.5 percent target the Commission had signaled although never clearly stated.  New targets for 2035, required from every Paris Agreement signatory, are central to this year’s climate conference. | COP 30 Press Office/Getty Images Under pressure from surging far-right parties and its high-polluting manufacturing industry, the EU has also embarked on a sweeping effort to deregulate and revise green policies, weakening parts of the legislative web designed to achieve its climate targets.  This hasn’t gone unnoticed in Beijing. At a meeting between high-level EU and Chinese climate officials in July, the Chinese chewed out their European counterparts for what they saw as the bloc backtracking on climate efforts, according to a person in the room.  “The Chinese said that it’s shameful — that’s the word they used, shameful — that the EU is going back on its word and lowering the bar on climate. That was quite embarrassing,” said the EU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic talks.  Until early summer, Brussels and Beijing were still talking about presenting their 2035 climate targets together to demonstrate joint leadership, the first diplomat said. But the bloc’s complex decision-making process and Hoekstra’s choice to delay proposing new climate goals until July meant the EU wasn’t ready.  “They weren’t seeing strong leadership from others, including the EU. Us not having a [target] was a factor,” the diplomat said.  “I think China misses the U.S. They had a stable partner — one they didn’t always agree with but could work with, could discuss with,” the diplomat added. “Now in the U.S. absence, they want to step up but are looking for a new partner. The EU is trying, but we’re slow.”  TRADING BARBS EU diplomats say the bloc isn’t the only one not pulling its weight, with the first negotiator complaining that the United Kingdom, for instance, was not stepping up. But they all acknowledged the EU’s challenges in filling the vacuum left by the U.S.  Aside from the internal backlash against the EU’s green agenda, personnel changes across the bloc “have not been helpful either,” the first diplomat said. “We used to have a lot more high-profile envoys and ministers.”  The bloc still has an army of experienced diplomats handling technical talks, but many of the political negotiators that helped usher past COPs to a conclusion are gone.  This year’s German elections saw the new government abolish the climate envoy role, until then held by COP veteran Jennifer Morgan. The Irish elections ousted Green Climate Minister Eamon Ryan, who co-led last year’s negotiations on how to prepare the world for climate disasters, a top issue in Belém. Two longtime climate negotiators, Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen and Spain’s Teresa Ribera, joined the Commission but won’t attend COP30.  While Ribera has held talks this year with not-quite-retired Chinese envoy Xie Zhenhua, the EU has not managed to set up a channel with Beijing to replace the bilateral efforts undertaken by U.S. envoys such as John Kerry.   “We still talk to them, but it was easier when the U.S. was there. Especially when Kerry and Xie spoke every other month,” said a third EU negotiator. “It’s much more ad-hoc now.”  Hoekstra said the EU had put in plenty of effort.  “We have been in very frequent interactions with them at all levels … we have invested very significantly in the relationship and that is something we will continue to do,” he said.  Rising trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing are also looming large over efforts to work together at COP. The bloc’s approach to China, more than anything, lays bare its difficulties in stepping up and out of Washington’s shadow. | Pablo Porciuncula/Getty Images The EU harbors growing disquiet about Chinese dominance in technologies and materials critical for the energy transition. Its domestic green backlash is driven in large part by the decline of the bloc’s traditional manufacturing base, with China’s state-subsidized model outcompeting the EU on everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines.  China and its companies “are massive beneficiaries of the green transition but don’t want to lead by example,” the third diplomat said. Beijing, meanwhile, feels threatened by the bloc’s countermeasure — a carbon tariff, known as CBAM, that seeks to protect European manufacturers from foreign competition not subject to the same climate rules.  Beijing and its allies, which see the measure as a protectionist move to shut emerging economies out of the EU market, have unsuccessfully sought to put CBAM on the agenda at past COPs. They are set to try again on Monday, and this time the bloc cannot rely on the U.S. to help fend off such attacks.  “The elephant in the room between the EU and China is CBAM,” said Trasi. “If the conversation around CBAM is not handled well, it can easily become very toxic and derail perhaps not the entire negotiations but joint efforts of the EU and China.”

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s environment ministers struck a deal watering down a proposed 2040 target for cutting planet-warming emissions and set a new 2035 climate plan. Following marathon negotiations all day Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, ministers unanimously approved the bloc’s long-overdue climate plan, rescuing the EU from the international embarrassment of showing up empty handed this month’s COP30 summit. The plan, which is a requirement under the Paris Agreement, sets a new goal to slash EU emissions between 66.25 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels until 2035. That plan is not legally binding but sets the direction of EU climate policy for the coming five years. The range is similar to an informal statement that the EU presented at a climate summit in New York in September. Ministers also adopted a legally-binding target for cutting emissions in the EU by 85 percent by 2040. The deal mandates that another 5 percent reduction be achieved by outsourcing pollution cuts abroad through the purchase of international carbon credits. On top of that, governments would be allowed to use credits to outsource another 5 percentage points of their national emissions reduction goals. Ministers also backed a wide-ranging review clause that allows the EU to adjust its 2040 target in the future if climate policy proves to have negative impacts on the EU’s economy. The deal also foresees a one-year delay to the implementation of the EU’s new carbon market for heating and car emissions, which is set to start in 2027. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland did not support the 2040 deal, while Bulgaria and Belgium abstained. The rest of the EU27 countries backed it. Lawmakers in the European Parliament now have to agree on their own position on the 2040 climate target and negotiate with the Council of the EU before the target becomes law. 

The Trump administration is ramping up the pressure on the European Union to repeal or overhaul a regulation on corporations’ greenhouse gas pollution — in the latest example of the United States’ willingness to wield its economic might against an international climate initiative. It comes less than a week after the U.S. scored a surprising victory over a proposed United Nations climate fee on shipping, in what one Trump Cabinet member described Wednesday as an “all hands on deck” lobbying blitz. In its newest effort, the Energy Department joined the government of Qatar in warning the EU that it’s risking higher prices for “critical energy supplies” unless it alters or deletes its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. “It is our genuine belief, as allies and friends of the EU, that the CSDDD will cause considerable harm to the EU and its citizens, as it will lead to higher energy and other commodity prices, and have a chilling effect on investment and trade,” the department and the Qataris said in an open letter Wednesday to European heads of state and EU members. During a press conference later in the day, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert declined to discuss the European Parliament’s negotiations over the climate directive. The new pressure on the EU comes after months of attempts by President Donald Trump and his appointees to blunt climate regulations at home and abroad that threaten to impinge on U.S. “dominance” in fossil fuels. And lately he’s succeeded in drawing some countries to the United States’ side. ‘WIN FOR THE WORLD’ On Friday, U.S. pressure succeeded in thwarting a proposal by U.N.’s International Maritime Organization to impose the first worldwide tax on climate pollution from shipping. The maritime body had been widely expected to adopt the shipping fee at a meeting in London, but instead it postponed the initiative for at least a year. Fellow petro-giants Russia and Saudi Arabia lobbied for the pause, and EU members Greece and Cyprus helped that effort by abstaining from the final vote. The aftermath of that vote continued to affect European climate diplomacy this week, temporarily upending internal EU discussions about the bloc’s negotiating position for next month’s COP30 summit in Brazil. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were exultant Wednesday in outlining the pressure they had brought to bear to block the maritime fee. Wright said he phoned 20 countries while Rollins handled nations such as Antigua and Jamaica in what she characterized as an “all hands on deck” effort. The effort also included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Wright said. Wright added that he had personally written a Truth Social message that Trump posted the night before the vote, in which the president warned that the “United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping.” (Trump changed “three or four words on it,” the secretary said.) “We’re going to come back to realistic views on energy,” Wright said at an event hosted by America First Policy Institute. “That’s a win not just for America, that’s a win for the world.” EUROPEAN CLIMATE PRESSURE The EU has already said it will not scrap its corporate climate directive, though it may dismantle a civil liability provision in a bid to simplify the law. But revising the directive has been a challenge for Europe because lawmakers are divided on how far to roll back sustainability reporting obligations for companies. The rule, which the EU put into force last year but still needs to be adopted by member states, would require companies to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe. Europe’s move to wean itself off Russian energy supplies since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has forced the continent to increase its reliance on U.S. liquefied natural gas imports. But U.S. gas producers have warned that the climate directive will increase the cost of doing business with customers in the EU. In the letter, DOE and Qatar said the climate directive “poses a significant risk to the affordability and reliability of critical energy supplies for households and businesses across Europe and an existential threat to the future growth, competitiveness, and resilience of the EU’s industrial economy.” The governments also advise the EU to repeal the directive or, barring that, rewrite key provisions dealing with the penalties and civil liabilities for companies that don’t comply with the regulation. The U.S. and Qatar also want the Europeans to change language requiring companies to provide transition plans for climate change mitigation. Marianne Gros contributed to this report from Brussels.

For decades, European leaders have walked into international environmental meetings with the swagger of the world’s self-proclaimed climate quarterback.  On Wednesday, that image will be shattered — along with European efforts to put pressure on major polluters like China — as the European Union takes a seat on the bench.   It’s an indignity entirely of the EU’s own making.  Governments across the 27-member bloc have spent much of the year squabbling over a set of new climate targets required by European law and the 2015 Paris Agreement.   U.N. deadlines have been ignored. And when dozens of global leaders are expected to announce hard pledges on Wednesday at what’s billed as a last-straw U.N. summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will show up in New York carrying nothing but an IOU.  The shift has dismayed those hoping the EU would fill the void in climate talks left by the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. “It’s kind of time to put your money where your mouth is and really step up and show leadership in this very complex geopolitical climate,” said Ilana Seid, an ambassador from Palau who chairs a negotiating bloc of 39 nations that are immediately threatened by rising sea levels and coral reef collapse, referring to the EU. Global climate affairs were once a theater where the EU spoke with an outsized voice. But its internal divisions will undermine the bloc’s influence, especially when it comes to efforts to sway China, the world’s largest polluter, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington.  “Many in China now characterize the EU as a middle power,” he said. Diplomats and officials from other countries said their impression was that the EU was so inwardly focused that it was difficult to get the bloc to engage with an area it had once cherished as a geopolitical weapon. “You can’t get anyone in the EU to pay an ounce of attention to this,” said one diplomat from a close EU ally. The shift has dismayed those hoping the EU would fill the void in climate talks left by the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. | Remon Haazen/Getty Images This sense of dismay has even reached typically reserved senior U.N. officials. During a briefing with reporters last week, which was conducted under condition of anonymity, a U.N. official said “we understand the complexity” faced by EU political leaders. “But we are really pushing the EU as well … now is not the time for the European Union to surrender that mantle of leadership.”  CLIMATE CHAOS The egg heading for von der Leyen’s face is the result of a political turn that has made it hard for pro-climate politicians to hold on to past gains, let alone set new targets. In the wake of a much-vaunted “green wave” in the 2019 European Parliament election, the EU legally committed to eliminating climate change-causing pollution by 2050. Since then, the pendulum has swung back, and the EU’s national governments have fallen out over how fast to get there. A combination of political and economic factors drives Europe’s indecision. These include the high costs of energy and related industrial stagnation, a militarization drive that is sucking funding from green initiatives, and an increasingly confident far-right populism that threatens to displace centrists in many EU countries. Emmanuel Macron once posed as the counterweight to Donald Trump’s trashing of the Paris Agreement. But this year the French president has waged a behind-the-scenes campaign to delay the new climate goals. His government faces an unprecedented challenge from far-right politicians who say they would scrap the EU’s green policy. Electoral math has also fed resistance in Poland and Czechia. “The EU is and will remain a global climate leader,” Denmark’s climate minister, Lars Aagaard, said Thursday. But, he said, Europe’s international partners understood that “it is a difficult time we are living in. I mean, there’s war on our continent.”  Talks among EU diplomats fell apart earlier this month after they failed to gain approval for a goal proposed by the European Commission to cut emissions by 90 percent by 2040. That, in turn, meant that EU countries were unable to agree on the intermediate 2035 target required by the U.N. under the Paris Agreement.  Faced with the prospect of being barred from speaking at the U.N. summit last Thursday, EU ministers hurriedly agreed to send von der Leyen to New York with a “statement of intent” in lieu of the required target. In a document that has no weight in law, they indicated a possible landing zone for a deal to cut climate pollution by between 66.3 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. They also guaranteed to arrive at a hard target before the COP30 climate conference in November.  Those responsible for the fudge have tried to sell it as leadership-as-usual for the EU. Speaking to the press after Thursday’s deal, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra was adamant the statement would “be perceived as a huge step forward.”    “I don’t think we should feel embarrassed,” Poland’s deputy climate minister, Krzysztof Bolesta, said flatly.   Others disagreed. Turning up without a new target was, in fact, “embarrassing,” said Linda Kalcher, executive director of the Brussels-based Strategic Perspectives think tank. The statement was only a “hard-fought consolation prize” that would save the EU from being excluded altogether.  CHINA STRATEGY European mortification was by no means the end of it, said the Asia Society’s Li. The EU’s internal disarray effectively hands China a free pass.  Over the last two decades, the EU has seen itself as a third power in climate affairs, driving forward other countries even as the two biggest economies, China and the U.S., moved more cautiously.   Experts are increasingly convinced that China’s pollution may peak this year, five years ahead of an official 2030 target that is viewed in Europe as hopelessly weak. | Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images “They were the front wheel of the climate tricycle,” said Li. In contrast to the EU, which has traditionally targeted sharp pollution cuts and then relied on others to follow suit, China has tended to underpromise so it can overdeliver.  Experts are increasingly convinced that China’s pollution may peak this year, five years ahead of an official 2030 target that is viewed in Europe as hopelessly weak. Beijing is expected to announce a new target this week for the rate of decline in its emissions over the coming decade. European envoys and former Biden administration officials have pushed for China to target a 30 percent decline. However, few observers believe Beijing will even come close to that number. If China disappoints as expected, “the European Union will not be in the position to comment, or at least comment credibly,” said Li. That demonstrates in visceral terms how Europe’s internal divisions have led to its “losing political influence” globally, he said.  The EU’s power in climate talks has often relied on a coalition with small island countries, for whom rapid cuts to emissions are the only acceptable goal. But heading into the COP30 conference, those traditional allies are now looking to China for leadership.  Alongside its huge coal power sector, China is the dominant clean energy player. That is not only translating to a huge growth in domestic renewable energy: Chinese firms have booked investments worth at least $210 billion in clean manufacturing projects outside China since 2022, according to a report from the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University. In real terms, it surpasses the Marshall Plan in scale.   “One of the things that we recognize is China has a lot to benefit from keeping the Paris Agreement alive,” said Seid, the ambassador from Palau. She said her country’s president had personally lobbied Macron. “There’s a lot of political work that’s being done to really try to have the EU step up.”  Karl Mathiesen reported from London. Zia Weise reported from Brussels. Sara Schonhardt reported from Washington. Louise Guillot contributed to this report from Brussels. 

The EU has been left off a provisional lineup for world leaders to tout their new climate targets, after the bloc failed to agree to a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. The Sept. 24 summit, convened by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, is specifically designated for announcements of new goals for cuts to climate pollution that are required under the 2015 Paris Agreement. But an internally divided EU has failed to agree on that goal, known in U.N. parlance as a nationally determined contribution (NDC). The absence of the EU, a longtime leader of global climate policy and diplomacy, would be extraordinary. The U.S., which has walked away from global efforts, was also not on the list. On Thursday, when the U.N. list was published, EU ministers were locked in talks over a “statement of intent,” which they hoped the EU might deliver instead of a hard target. Given the strict criteria set by the U.N., there was no guarantee this would grant the EU access. China, the largest polluter, was on the list and was expected to announce a new target. Russia was on the list. India, however, was not afforded a platform. A U.N. official signaled the EU might be given a pass and that the bloc was expected to have “something” to announce on Sept. 24. “We know that they take climate seriously,” said the official, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “We know that they are working on their NDC, so we’ve given them the time, but we need them to really continue to be that global leader.” The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Karl Mathiesen reported from London. Sara Schonhardt reported from Washington.

BRUSSELS — Sorry, guys. We’ll get back to you. That’s the message the European Union is expected to deliver at a pivotal climate summit of world leaders next week after the bloc’s countries were unable to agree on a plan to reduce planet-warming emissions by 2035. Failure to submit a target to the United Nations this month would undermine the EU’s ability to influence the efforts of other nations and result in diplomatic embarrassment for the bloc, which has long claimed a leadership role in global climate talks — particularly as China is expected to present its plan on time.  But EU governments, who have to unanimously approve the 2035 plan mandated by the Paris Agreement, are at odds over how to arrive at the target.  As a result, Denmark, the country currently chairing negotiations among governments, suggested to other countries on Tuesday that the EU will merely send a “statement of intent” to the U.N. instead of submitting the required formal plan.  The Danes now expect the EU’s 27 environment ministers to finalize and approve the statement of intent at their meeting in Brussels on Thursday. Three diplomats briefed on Tuesday’s talks said that while ministers may discuss a formal plan, there is virtually no chance of approving it.  This means the EU will miss the U.N.’s end-of-September deadline to submit an official 2035 target. Instead, if greenlit by ministers on Thursday, the bloc will show up at a Sept. 24 summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly with only a promise to eventually deliver a goal.  A spokesperson for the Danish negotiating team said that Copenhagen “received broad support for our approach of exploring a statement of intent,” as this “would ensure that [the] EU does not go to [the] U.N. climate summit empty-handed.”  But the Danes also said they were “aware of different positions on the exact content,” and the three diplomats said that Thursday’s ministerial summit would involve difficult negotiations to reach a consensus. The statement as drafted by Denmark proposes a temporary emissions-cutting target of between 66.3 percent and 72.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. EU countries would have to agree on a definitive target at a later date.  While too late for the U.N. deadline, this approach gives Denmark another chance to secure support for the more ambitious target. To achieve that, they will have to find a landing ground among sharply divergent views held by governments.  The EU had intended to derive a 2035 goal of 72.5 percent from a new 2040 milestone that is currently being negotiated. That plan was derailed by disagreements over the 2040 legislation. On Friday, Denmark postponed a vote scheduled for this week after major countries blocked progress.  Some countries, such as Poland, have advocated for the EU to submit the range as the formal target, which would not be unusual: Brazil, the host of this year’s COP30 climate summit, has done so.  But for the EU, it would nevertheless represent a weaker goal, as it would see the EU effectively commit to a 66.3 percent target, while leaving open the possibility for further improvement.  For that reason, another group of countries is fiercely opposed to disconnecting the 2035 target from the 2040 goal.  Just when the EU will submit its finalized plan to the U.N. remains unclear. The Danish statement insists that the bloc will do so before COP30 starts in early November.  EU countries agreed last week to host a debate among national leaders, scheduled for Oct. 23, before agreeing on a 2040 target. That will leave just two weeks to then strike a deal on both goals ahead of the summit in Brazil.

For decades, the only meaningful deals China struck with any other nation to reduce its enormous output of greenhouse gases were with the world’s other largest polluter, the United States. Now, the European Union is trying to break into that club.  Six months ago, the Donald Trump administration cut U.S. ties to the Paris climate agreement, reneging on past deals with Beijing.  That left a huge gap. The world’s two top-polluting countries had for many years set the course for the rest of the world — albeit at a pace far too slow to avoid warming the planet to catastrophic levels.  Even in the hours before its leaders were to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, there was no guarantee of a deal. But on Wednesday afternoon EU diplomats were told the statement would go ahead, according to one of those informed, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the talks. If an agreement comes, there’s no certainty it will be meaningful. Regardless, experts say a joint statement between the leaders of the EU and China, being floated for Thursday’s summit, could be a much-needed boost for jittery clean energy markets and give political confidence to other nations’ governments to further cut their own emissions. “This is a moment the EU and China cannot afford to miss,” said Ireland’s former President Mary Robinson, a prominent voice in climate diplomacy. “EU-China climate cooperation can help steady markets, accelerate the clean energy transition and show that even in a moment of division, climate action remains one of the surest paths to resilience.” On Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, presidents of the European Commission and European Council — which writes the bloc’s legislation and represents the national leaders, respectively — will meet Xi and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing for talks including on security, economics and trade. The relationship is not ripe for dealmaking and there is little prospect for fruitful discussions on any of these topics, with trade tensions in particular driving the two sides apart.  In fact, climate is the only topic where there appears to be any hope of an outcome beyond thin-lipped smiles.  Beijing wants a “comprehensive agreement” on trade, economics and beyond from the leaders’ summit, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. But failing that, “at least a climate one.”  CHANGING EQUATION During the first Trump administration, the EU struggled to step into the role of China’s climate interlocutor. Those talks were restricted by the EU’s own internal divisions and lack of diplomatic clout, as well as China’s unwillingness to step into the role of global leader and the expectation that Trump was an aberration. A decade later, Trump is back in the White House, and some things have changed.  For one, China doesn’t need convincing that climate efforts are in its national interest. China’s clean technology economy has surged, with exports of products such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles “becoming key growth drivers for the Chinese economy,” said Belinda Schäpe, a China policy analyst with the Finland-based nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.  That has a positive effect on the climate. According to analysis by the website Carbon Brief, Chinese clean technology exports reduced global emissions by around 1 percent in 2024.   Schäpe said the EU is an “important market” for Chinese products, which are often cheaper. That gives China more incentive to deal with the EU. It also feeds into the trade tensions that are upsetting the rest of the EU-China talks, with Europeans fearful that China’s state subsidies will lead to a flood of cheap products displacing manufacturers in the EU. On top of that, earlier this year, China extended export controls on critical minerals needed for the production of many clean technologies.  That showed China was “willing to strike where it hurts when geopolitics demand it,” said Byford Tsang, a senior policy fellow with the Asia program at the pan-European think tank European Council on Foreign Relations.  “Before signing up for a closer climate partnership with Beijing, Europe should ask whether it is ready to accept the terms and conditions of relying on China Inc. for its energy transition.” BURNISHING CHINA’S IMAGE A deal would boost China’s attempts to position itself as the anti-Trump locus of global affairs, and a supporter of the United Nations and multilateralism. “In an increasingly turbulent international landscape with rising unilateralism and protectionism,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told the press on Tuesday, the summit was “good not only to our two sides, but also to the world as a whole.”  An agreement with the EU on global warming would make the U.S. look isolated and reckless, boosting China.  Such a statement would draw a sharp contrast “against the U.S. withdrawal” from the Paris deal, said Schäpe. As well, it shows China can work with Europe “despite the situation with Russia” and Beijing’s tacit support for its war in Ukraine.  “It makes China look like the more responsible actor,” Schäpe added. The EU doesn’t want to hand China that win for nothing.  The two camps have held intense talks for months in the hope of brokering a joint leaders’ statement this week.  That includes a two-day summit earlier in July between Chinese ministers and EU commissioners in Beijing. The two sides tangled over the EU’s demand for China to make real commitments, either on cutting down pollution or curtailing its coal use, according to an EU official who was granted anonymity to discuss the substance of the talks.  “China was a very challenging mission,” said a separate Commission official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy as they are not authorized to speak publicly.  The EU and China are both expected to submit new targets for reducing emissions until 2035 ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil in November. The EU is especially keen for China to give a signal that its goal will be a step up from its current promise to peak emissions by 2030.  Western diplomats have pressured Beijing to promise a cut of more than 30 percent below the peak by 2035.  But the EU’s leverage has been undermined by its own slow process for entering a pledge, with the process for doing so mired in political controversy. “The problem is,” said Li, “when it comes to substance, the European side has very clear demands on Chinese climate action — but its own climate politics is backfiring big time at home.” SEEKING LOW-HANGING FRUIT Joint climate statements have previously been the sole domain of the “G2” — China and the U.S, the two largest polluters and economies.  Together, the pair accounts for around 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions every year, with China making up the bulk at roughly 30 percent.  Throughout the three-decade history of international climate diplomacy, economic and superpower competition between Beijing and Washington meant neither wanted to restrict or shift its economic model without a sign that the other would as well. A major breakthrough came in 2014, when Xi and Barack Obama made a deal to cut their pollution. That agreement laid the foundation for the Paris Agreement, struck a year later. In 2022, the two superpowers also agreed to cut release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for almost one-third of global warming since the industrial revolution. The “Sunnylands Statement” — named for the California estate where it was signed — sidestepped the thorniest issues to find lower value, but still important, places for accord.  This could serve as the template for an EU-China deal, said Li. There may be room for cooperation on building out renewable energy, reining in nitrogen oxide pollution, financing climate efforts in poorer countries and on carbon pricing frameworks underway in both countries. They might even revisit the moribund U.S.-China deal on methane. Li suggested they could also look to make a deal on the “sticking points” around the COP30 climate talks. Those include agreeing to avoid messy fights between the big economies that might derail the talks, a rolling dispute over the EU’s carbon border tax, how to extend a past global pledge on moving away from fossil fuel use or funding a new anti-deforestation initiative.  But EU officials have been watering down such expectations. “If finally there is a joint statement, it will be an important step forward,” said the Commission official. “In this critical situation I’d say that the victory it’s the joint statement itself.” Zia Weise contributed to this report from Munich.