BRUSSELS — The European Commission has unconditionally approved Mars’ $36 billion acquisition of Kellanova following an in-depth review of the transaction. The Commission said it had concluded that the deal — which combines Mars’ confectionery and pet food brands with Kellanova’s snacks and cereals — would not significantly increase the merged entity’s bargaining power vis-à-vis retailers. The EU executive referred the deal, which was originally announced in Aug. 2024, for an in-depth review in June. “We looked very carefully at this deal to make sure that Mars would not gain extra power over retailers,” said Teresa Ribera, the executive vice president of the Commission responsible for competition. “Our review found no evidence that this risk exists.” The Commission’s probe focused on whether the expanded portfolio would allow Mars to extract higher prices from supermarkets by leveraging a so-called “basket effect” — but determined that there was insufficient evidence to support this theory. Following its review, the Commission determined that, because products like Pringles and chocolate bars are typically “impulsive and infrequent purchases,” consumers are unlikely to change supermarkets based on their availability.

Paul McCartney has joined forces with U.K. MPs who are urging Brussels to scrap any plans to ban the use of meat-related names such as “burger” and “sausage” for plant-based products. The proposed EU ban, if passed into law, would prohibit food producers from using designations such as “veggie burger” or “vegan sausage” for plant-based and lab-grown dishes. “To stipulate that burgers and sausages are ‘plant-based,’ ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’ should be enough for sensible people to understand what they are eating,” the former Beatles star, who became a vegetarian in 1975, told The Times of London. “This also encourages attitudes essential to our health and that of the planet.” The proposed EU ban “could increase confusion” and “undermine economic growth, sustainability goals, and the EU’s own simplification agenda,” eight British MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, wrote in a letter to Brussels. The Times reported the contents of the letter Saturday evening. The missive includes the support of the McCartney family, which owns a business selling vegetarian food and recipes. The looming ban stems from an amendment that French center-right MEP Céline Imart introduced into legislation that aims to reform EU farming rules. These proposed reforms include how farmers sign contracts with buyers alongside other technical provisions. The bill is now subject to legislative negotiations with the Council of the EU, which represents EU governments.  The proposed rules will become law if and when MEPs and the Council agree on a final version of the legislation to become EU law. MPs in the U.K. fear that the ban, if it survives, would also impact British supermarkets, as markets and companies across the continent are so closely intertwined. Imart’s burger-busting tweaks were supposed to be a gesture of respect toward the French farmers that she represents — but they have divided MEPs within her own European People’s Party. “A steak is not just a shape,” Imart told POLITICO in an interview last month. “People have eaten meat since the Neolithic. These names carry heritage. They belong to farmers.” Limiting labels for vegetarian producers will also help shoppers understand the difference between a real burger and a plant-based patty, according to Imart, despite years of EU surveys showing consumers largely understand the difference. U.K. MPs also cite research in their letter, stating that European shoppers “overwhelmingly understand and support current naming conventions” such as “veggie burger.”

President Donald Trump has changed his position on more than a few things over the years, but in at least one area he’s been consistent: tariffs. The president is a tariff man, as he’s fond of saying. And the man behind the man in this instance is U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. A longtime trade lawyer who served in the first Trump administration, Greer is now working to help revamp the global trading system at the president’s behest — and he rejects the widespread criticism that Trump’s sweeping tariff regime has been rolled out haphazardly. “Yes, there’s a strategy,” Greer said in a new interview with The Conversation. “First of all, you don’t change 70 years of trade policy overnight. And second of all, when some people say, ‘Oh, well, this is chaos. What’s your strategy?’, what they really want to know is can we go back to how it was before? And that’s not going to happen.” Much of the president’s tariff agenda is currently at risk amid a seemingly skeptical Supreme Court, though Greer professed confidence and said the White House had backup options if need be. Perhaps most worrisome for the administration is the politics of higher prices, and Greer was eager to bat down charges that tariffs were to blame. “People are worried about housing, they’re worried about healthcare — things we don’t import,” he said. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You have probably the most important portfolio of this administration given just how big of a priority trade has been for the president. I was at many a Trump rally when he talked about how “tariff” is his favorite word, now his fifth favorite word, “God, love, wife,” something else. Yeah, he had to moderate a little bit on that. You are a veteran trade lawyer. You served in Trump’s first term as chief of staff to then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. What is different about the approach this time around? In the first Trump administration, we were charting new waters, right? We were coming into the so-called Washington consensus that tariffs were bad and we shouldn’t protect domestic industry and we shouldn’t try to make tough deals with our friends and foe alike. Now having laid the groundwork in the first term, showing we could use tariffs effectively while having a booming economy, the president was able to move to his true vision, which he’s had for many years, which is to protect the American economy with tariffs, use them as leverage where needed to get foreign market access, and otherwise use them for geopolitical issues. So where we were walking in the first term, now we can run and fly, frankly. One of the narratives around the tariffs is that the strategy is chaos, that this has been really unpredictable. I’ve heard from businesses that it’s been a challenge because they’re just not sure where all of this is going to land, plus you have all of the legal cases on top of that. So is the strategy chaos? Is there a strategy? So yes, there’s a strategy. First of all, you don’t change 70 years of trade policy overnight. And second of all, when some people say, “Oh, well, this is chaos. What’s your strategy?”, what they really want to know is can we go back to how it was before? And that’s not going to happen. A lot of people focus on April 2 Liberation Day. We announced potentially very, very high tariffs. But I would focus people more on Aug. 1, and I use that date because that is the date where the president really set the tariff rates, and where we announced a bunch of deals. And from there, the structure that has played out demonstrates the strategy that we have. If you look at the tariff setup in the world that’s come out of the president’s program, the highest tariffs are on China. Again, not because we bear China any ill will, but because we have a giant trade deficit with them and they have a lot of unfair trading practices. The next set of highest tariffs is Southeast Asia, India, these other areas that use a lot of Chinese content, Southeast Asia in particular, and we have giant trade deficits with them, Vietnam, for example. And then the next highest tariff rates, and these are usually about 15 percent, folks who are allies but with whom we have big trade issues: Korea, Japan, Europe, etc. And then the lowest tariff rates are really in the Western Hemisphere, where we want our supply chains to be, where it’s very secure. So you can really see almost like concentric rings going out from China, what the tariff rates are like. We have a couple outliers right now. India has a higher tariff for some geopolitical reasons. They buy Russian oil. Brazil has some higher tariffs. Economy & Education: U.S. trade rep. Greer and teacher’s union head Weingarten | The ConversationSharePlay Video We were close to a deal there over the summer and it got derailed. What happened there? The president wants deals but he only wants good deals. And so whenever you present a deal to the president, the question is, am I better off with just having the tariff? And the assessment of the deal in the summer with India was, well, I think we’re just better off with the tariff than with the potential deal. But that has not stopped us from continuing conversations. It’s still going quite well, I would say, with the Indians. There’s a separate issue where they were buying Russian oil. They’ve stopped doing that largely now. So I think we could see some tariff modification at some point for them. But I’m confident that we’ll get a deal with India at some point in the future, maybe the near future. It’ll be up to the president and Prime Minister Modi. Have you been involved at all in talking about a potential future trading partnership with Russia after the end of the war? Not very much. Even before the war, we didn’t have a huge trading relationship with Russia. We would get oil and steel and some fertilizer from them. We’d ship them cars and some ag products. So it was never a giant trading relationship. If the war ends then obviously there may be opportunity there. But we’re really focused on big export markets. There’s been a ton of debate about the short, medium and long term impact of these tariffs. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released a report saying the world economy has been surprisingly resilient in the face of Trump’s trade wars, but they added that they expect higher tariffs to gradually result in higher prices and reduce growth in household consumption and business investment. How do you respond to that assessment and are you worried about some economic pain in the short term? I just look at the data, right? They’re saying we think it’ll lead to lower growth in the future or higher prices or something, but they’ve been saying that for a long time. And the data show that last quarter was 3.8 percent [annual] growth. The Atlanta Fed is projecting 4.2 percent growth next year. We’ve seen inflation in check. We’ve seen imported goods remain relatively low-priced. Where we see prices high are things like housing and health care, because Obamacare is a disaster. The Supreme Court is weighing whether to narrow the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — IEEPA — which is the 1970s-era law that the administration has cited for imposing many of these tariffs. How are you preparing for the possibility that one of these main tariff authorities you’ve been using could be constrained? First of all, we believe the law and the facts are on our side. This Supreme Court has talked about how important it is to simply analyze the plain text of the law. And if you look at the plain text, it says the president, if he determines there’s an emergency, he can regulate imports. And he’s determined there’s an emergency and he’s regulating imports, which is the tariff. Now, we’ve been thinking about this plan for five years or longer. Since the first term. So you can be sure that when we came to the president at the beginning of the term, we had a lot of different options. IEEPA is the most appropriate because there is an emergency with the trade deficit and the loss of manufacturing, and it has the flexibility that you need to respond to the type of emergency that there is. My message is tariffs are going to be a part of the policy landscape going forward. Are there other ways to do it? Courts during this process have actually cited those different tools. And while we certainly can use those, IEEPA is the best tool. It fits the situation, and we’re looking forward to hearing back from the Supreme Court soon. But you’re prepared for alternative measures if they do decide to constrain IEEPA? Well, I’m not going to go into too much detail about that, or else I’ll get in trouble with my general counsel. But you’ve got something in your back pocket. Of course. Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on this, the administration’s reciprocal tariffs could be reversed by a future president. Is there any plan to go to Congress to try to codify any of this stuff? Well, if I were Congress, I would codify it. I have heard from a handful of members of Congress from all over the ideological spectrum, whether left or right or progressive or conservative, free trader or protectionist — however you want to characterize it. I’ve heard a lot of interest in this and for a lot of reasons. People have seen what I just described, which is that you can implement tariffs and have growth at the same time. You can protect your supply chains and have wages increase. You can do all of these things together, especially if you couple it with good energy policy, etc. I’ve also had members of Congress come to me, people who maybe weren’t fans of tariffs two years ago, and they said, “This is actually real money that’s coming in that can be used to pay down the debt or pay for other things or finance our reindustrialization.” Who are those members? Well, I won’t betray their confidences. You said that some members are telling you, “Hey, I’ve changed my mind on tariffs.” There are other members that have spoken privately or publicly, saying “These tariffs are hurting my constituents,” particularly people in farm states. I’m thinking GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Rand Paul and a number of folks that have come out and said they’re concerned. What do you say to members of Congress who feel that this is not beneficial for their folks? Well Sen. Paul is a little bit of a man on an island on this issue. Well sure, but Rep. Don Bacon — He [Paul] compared me to a Soviet commissar in some comments. All right, we’ll leave Rand Paul on the side here, but there are others like Bacon and Grassley and other folks that have voiced some concerns. I’ve talked to Sen. Grassley a lot, and he knows a lot about trade. He’s been around a long time and as a general matter, it sounds to me frequently that he is quite aligned with the president in terms of wanting to get foreign market access, particularly for his folks who are trying to sell pork and soybeans overseas. We have made sure, in addition to securing soybean purchases from China, who’s a big customer, to open markets in Southeast Asia in particular for soybeans. Markets that were never open before. Now these countries are taking down their tariff, they’re taking down their non-tariff barriers. And so on that, I think we’re aligned. There’s always concern when you’re changing what’s a 70-year trade policy to something new, and there can be frictions. But we are careful to listen to these folks again, from both sides of the aisle, find out what their concerns are and respond to them. The president did exempt some agricultural imports from tariffs amid ongoing concerns about higher prices. Why didn’t he do that from the beginning? How did that shift come about? First of all, inflation’s been in check. So let’s just clear the air on that. Secondly, in early September, the president signaled, he put out an executive order, and we made a list of all the — whether it’s agricultural goods or minerals or things that physically can’t be grown in the United States or extracted from the United States. The rocks aren’t here, or you can’t grow a banana here, on any scale. So in early September, he put out an executive order. He said, as I do deals with countries, I will release tariffs on these items. Why? Because we get them from those countries. There seems to be a real resistance in the language around tariffs to say that tariffs are causing higher prices. Nobody wants to really say that. But in making the exemptions, aren’t you basically acknowledging that tariffs do lead to higher prices on products? No. Okay. Can you explain? There’s never really a 1-to-1 with a tariff. In the first term, when we put tariffs on China, inflation actually went down. As we were putting tariffs in place, inflation went down. We’ve seen a similar effect here. When the president says, “We’re going to have deals with you folks,” you have to have leverage, right? And so you keep tariffs on folks for all kinds of things and it becomes a carrot. So it’s a lot easier for me to go to Ecuador or Indonesia or Vietnam and say, “Listen, if you do a deal with us and we’ve announced frameworks or full agreements with all these countries I just mentioned, then at a given time, we will release these things because obviously we don’t make them.” When you have a tariff, it doesn’t necessarily go through to the consumer. I don’t want to get too technical here for you, except I’m kind of nerdy about it. But sometimes does it? I mean it can, right? Like on those things that you mentioned, like coffee and bananas and all of that stuff? It depends on what the production economy is like. And when I say production economy, say bananas, if you have a hundred banana producers overseas, they’re all going to compete for market share in the U.S. because we’re the biggest consumer of a lot of these things. And so they will compete to eat the tariff. Do you see what I’m saying? I do, but when voters who don’t understand this are going to the grocery store and seeing that prices haven’t gone down, how do you tackle that with all the leverage that you’re talking about? Well, I can’t control the weather in Brazil with a tariff. Coffee prices, for example, have been going up for two years. Before there was ever a tariff on coffee for six months or whatever we had. And there are secular pricing trends in coffee and cocoa that were going on well before. And beef, these kinds of things. All that being said, we don’t have to have a tariff on these things. We don’t make them here. We can have a tariff on them for leverage, which is how the president used them. It’s how he said he was going to use it. He signaled in September, these are for leverage to finish the deals. So we were well placed two months later once we announced the rest of our deals to take the tariff off. The US-Mexico-Canada agreement — USMCA — that Trump negotiated in his first term is facing a mandatory review next year. What are the top changes that the administration is looking to make? When you think about the U.S., Canada, Mexico agreement, there are a few things we trade among us in a massive way. One of them is automobiles, another’s agriculture, another is energy. With respect to the auto trade, the goal is to make more autos in the United States of America. Mexico has been a huge beneficiary of NAFTA and then of USMCA. And so the president, earlier in his second term, imposed tariffs on autos globally, including on Mexico. So there’s an overlap between those tariffs and our agreement and USMCA. And those tariffs, which are about 25 percent, are layered over USMCA. Now all of that being said, we can look at the underlying rules of USMCA. If something comes in and gets special duty treatment or a lower tariff, there’s usually a rule of origin associated with it that says a certain amount of this widget has to come from the region. Otherwise you have to pay a higher tariff. We can change some of those rules to make them tighter, to have a higher percentage have to come from the United States. Those are the kinds of things we can do. There’s also a bunch of stuff in Mexico and Canada where maybe they discriminate against our companies. It could be telecom companies or it could be our corn exports. There are a variety of little things like that that may seem small and don’t lend themselves to sound bites, but they mean a lot for agricultural producers. Is there still a scenario where the U.S. could walk away from USMCA or is that off the table at this point? I mean that’s always a scenario, right? The president’s view is he only wants deals that are a good deal. The reason why we built a review period into USMCA was in case we needed to revise it, review it or exit it. I have heard from a lot of folks how important USMCA is. Canada and Mexico are huge export markets for us. I was in the White House yesterday, and we were talking about USMCA. What about Mexico? What about Canada? You know, the possibility that we kind of negotiate separately with them, right? Their economies are subject to it. Yeah, where’s his head at right now? Listen, our relationship with the Canadian economy is totally different than our relationship with the Mexican economy. The labor situation’s different, the stuff that’s being made is different, the export and import profile is different. It actually doesn’t make a ton of economic sense why we would marry those three together. The actual trade between Canada and Mexico is much smaller than the trade between the U.S. and Canada and U.S. and Mexico. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “Oh, well, you know, USMCA, it’s a $31 trillion agreement.” It’s like, well, yeah, but like $29 trillion is us. So I think it makes sense to talk to them separately about that agreement. A lot of the underlying rules are helpful and you know our exporters benefit from them, but we have to make sure that we are getting the benefit of our bargain on USMCA. You were in Brussels recently, talking about deals. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said when he was over there that the U.S. could modify its approach on steel and aluminum tariffs if the EU reconsidered its digital rules. Some European officials were a little irked by that and interpreted it as targeting the EU’s flagship tech regulations, including the Digital Markets Act. Europe’s antitrust chief, Teresa Ribera told POLITICO that Washington is using “blackmail” to strong-arm the EU. What’s your response to that? That’s a totally extreme thing to say. The problem is the Digital Markets Act and other European digital regulations and regulations outside of digital, they actually target U.S. companies. And how do we know that? First of all, when all these laws were being passed, all the European parliamentarians and all the leaders in Europe were saying, “We’re going to implement these laws to get Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.” In fact, they have certain taxes over there, and they call them GAFA tax. The acronym is for American companies. And then they have these thresholds built into these laws where if you meet a certain global revenue threshold or you have a certain business model, and just magically they only capture U.S. companies. We reported last month that the European Commission was set to present a list to you of sectors that it wants to be exempted from U.S. tariffs. The list was expected to include medical devices, wine — which is very important to me — spirits, beers and pasta. Where do those deliberations stand? Well, they did not present such a list. Ah! And the reason why is because under our deal from the summer, the United States has already adjusted its tariff levels for Europe, and Europe is still adjusting its tariffs. And I don’t say this to be critical. They have a legal process they have to go through, and they’re proceeding through it as quickly as they can, I think. So it would be weird for them to come and say, “We haven’t finished making our tariff adjustments yet, and we want more from you.” Listen, if they want to come and talk about other tariff adjustments, that’ll be up to the president and that kind of thing. But it’s a sequencing issue. Like why would I give them more tariff relief before they’ve done their part of the bargain, right? That doesn’t make sense. Trump talked about tariffs on the campaign trail, but I don’t think a lot of the world, particularly our allies in Europe, were necessarily prepared for the scale, as you mentioned earlier. When you were in Brussels, for example, can you give me a little bit of a behind-the-scenes on what those conversations are like when you sit across a table? Sure. So we are eleven months into this presidency. And I would say that most of our European partners have frankly become quite pragmatic. In the first term, when we talked about tariffs and changing the global structure, there was a lot of almost religious-sounding sermonizing from the Europeans. For them, international institutions and what they believe is international law, this is like religion. It’s their religion, and they have these high priests and the European Commission, all these places. But the folks we’re dealing with right now in the European Commission, President von der Leyen, the trade commissioner, these are pragmatic folks. They understand the facts on the ground. They understand the U.S. view. They understand we have these huge trade deficits that are not sustainable. And so the conversations are constructive. We’re not fighting about policy, we’re talking about implementation. So that’s all positive. All that being said, there are two or three countries that still like to sermonize a little bit about this. The ambassador from one country came to me and said, “Well, how can you use these tariffs against us? You know, tariffs are bad, blah, blah, blah.” I said, if tariffs are so bad, then how come your tariffs on us are so high still? And he said, “Well, I’m not trying to negotiate.” But I mean, that’s my point. They come and they say, “Well, you shouldn’t have tariffs,” but European tariffs have been higher on the U.S. historically for many years. You said the conversations are productive and pragmatic now. Is that a shift from early this year? Yes. Yes, a hundred percent. So where does the EU deal stand? We had our joint statement in August. We’ve adjusted our tariffs to be a little bit lower for them. They’re in the process of adjusting theirs. We have a lot of non-tariff barriers that we face in Europe, regulatory constraints, certifications, inspection regimes, things that are duplicative, things that gum up trade between the United States and Europe. Did Brussels move that all forward? I would say so. It was less of a negotiating trip and more of taking stock of where we are, where we’re divergent and next steps. We have a small team coming over from the Europeans next week to really talk about how we can better memorialize changes in these non-tariff barriers going forward. Because even though the Europeans are taking down most of their tariffs for us, if you take down the tariff but there’s still non-tariff barriers, it’s not effective market access. So we have to do both the tariffs and the non-tariff barriers. We can’t talk about trade without talking about China. What is the administration’s endgame with China? Is it coexistence? Is it decoupling? Is it selective engagement? What is it? Well, it’s funny because Washington creates these kind of fake categories. They’ll say, “Oh, well, either you’re a China hawk or a China dove.” The way we think about it in the administration is we’re pro-American. We’re not anti-China. We’re not China doves. We’re not China hawks. We are pro-American. I think you meant to say America First. Well, yes, America First. Thank you. And sometimes you hear people saying, “For America to win, China has to lose.” I just don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reality is we are going to do what’s right for America in terms of trade. And in some cases, it means we have to have a tariff on countries, higher tariffs on some, like China, because they’re a bigger issue with respect to trade. They have more trade cheating, they have more subsidies and that kind of thing. If China still manages to be successful? Fine. We’re not here to try to contain China. We’re here to make sure that America has a strong national security, strong economic security, that our workers have jobs that are good for them in the towns and cities where they live, that they can raise a family. That’s what we’re trying to do. If China rises or falls on that, that’s kind of up to them. We’re happy to work with them. They have their own plans. One thing I will say is people act like American policy drives Chinese reaction, that China’s just always reacting to us. And I think they want us to think that, but they’re agents unto themselves. They publish a new policy every five years. They announced this Made in China 2025 project in 2015, well before President Trump was the president. So they have their own economic plans, which are oftentimes adverse to our interests, and so we will control for that, whether through tariffs or other measures. We just saw voters in this last election in November clearly send a message that affordability, cost of living really, really matters. What can you tell the American people about what they can expect to see going into next year? How will all of this impact not the markets, but their day-to-day? What I would say is trade, it’s not a big factor in the affordability discussion. When you look at affordability, it’s really about the crazy high expenses for health care that were engendered by Obamacare, which was a disaster. It’s about housing expenses that went way up during the Biden years and are still — But some people, as they’re shopping for Christmas, are connecting prices at Walmart and at the grocery store to the affordability conversation. I’ve talked to Walmart officials, I’ve talked to all kinds of officials, and they have said that they’re not raising prices. At back-to-school time in September, they say we’re not raising prices. They’re still doing their rollback. I know that’s a press narrative, but it’s actually not a true narrative. When you talk about affordability, people are worried about it. People are worried about housing, they’re worried about healthcare — things we don’t import. But where trade comes into it is when you have a trade system in place that protects U.S. jobs, you get higher incomes. So the blue collar wages are up this year. That’s what matters. In the first term, we had real income increase, up until the pandemic, which was like this black swan event. That’s what we’re trying to do with trade. Trade is not, “Let’s manage affordability through trade.” Trade is, “Let’s make sure we have good paying jobs here, especially for that working class whose jobs went away to Mexico or Vietnam or China. And so if you have blue-collar wages going up, whatever price effects are going on from all kinds of things in the economy — as long as the real income is outpacing whatever price effects there are — that’s what we’re looking for. That’s what we’re seeing. What about those tariff dividends that the president has floated? Well, you can talk to Scott Bessent. I don’t control the money. I just put the tariffs on to make the deals.

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Ban Ki-moon is the eighth secretary-general of the U.N. and the co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. Ana Toni is the CEO of COP30. As world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), we are standing at a global tipping point. 2024 broke temperature records, as the world temporarily surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius target for the first time. And now, we’re on track to cross it permanently within just five years. This means adaptation action has never been more vital for our survival. From the year 2000 to 2019, climate change already cost the world’s most vulnerable countries an estimated $525 billion. This burden only continues to rise, putting lives at risk and undoing hard-won development gains, with global annual damages likely to land somewhere between $19 trillion and $59 trillion in 2050. Even more sobering, the world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change, no matter how successful today’s mitigation efforts are. This makes one thing clear: The consequence of inaction is far greater than the consequence of action. The world must stop seeing adaptation as a cost to bear but as an investment that strengthens economies and builds healthier, more secure communities. Every dollar invested in adaptation can generate more than 10 times that in benefits through avoided losses, as well as induced economic, social and environmental benefits. Every dollar invested in agricultural research and development generates similar returns for smallholder farmers, vulnerable communities and ecosystems too. This remains true even if climate-related disasters don’t occur. Effective adaptation does more than save lives — it makes the economic case for resilience. And if we really want to tackle the crises of today’s world, we need to put people — especially those most vulnerable — at the center of all our conversations and efforts. Those least responsible for climate change are the ones our financing must reach. Here, locally led adaptation provides a path forward, focusing on giving communities agency over their futures, addressing structural inequalities and enhancing local capacities. Today, more than 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for their livelihoods, but as little as 1.7 percent of climate finance reaches Indigenous communities and locally operated farms. Small-scale agri-food systems, which are essential to many in developing countries, receive a mere 0.8 percent of international climate finance. This is deeply unjust. These are the people and systems most threatened by climate impacts — and they’re often the best-placed ones to deliver locally effective and regionally adaptive solutions. To that end, appropriate investments in global networks like the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) could accelerate and scale technologies that can be adopted by these local systems. These tools could then be used to improve resilience and increase productivity in low- and middle-income countries, while also reducing inequalities and advancing gender equity and social inclusion. The world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change. | Albert Llop/Getty Images Scaling such efforts will be crucial in moving toward systemic climate solutions. Our ambition is to move from negotiation to implementation to protect lives, safeguard assets and advance equity. But it’s important to remember that adaptation is distinct — it is inherently local; shaped by geography, communities and governance systems. Meeting this challenge will require more than just pledges. It will necessitate high-quality public and private adaptation finance that is accessible to vulnerable countries and communities. That’s why governments around the world — especially those in high-income countries — must design institutional arrangements and policies that raise additional public funds, incentivize markets and embed resilience into every investment decision. The decade since the Paris Agreement laid the foundations for a world at peace with the planet. And with COP30 now taking place in the heart of the Amazon, we must make adaptation a global priority and see resilience as the investment agenda of the 21st century. At its core, climate finance should be driving development pathways that put people first. In Belém, leaders must now close the adaptation finance gap and ensure funding reaches those on the front lines. They need to back investable national resilience strategies, replicate successful initiatives and put resilience at the center of financial decision-making. COP30 needs to be transformative and lead to markets that reward resilience, communities that are better protected and economies built on firmer, more climate-resilient foundations. Let this be the moment we finally move from awareness to alignment, and from ambition to action. Our collective survival depends on it. Question is, will our leaders have the political will to seize it?

KYIV — Oleksandra Avramenko lowers her car window, not for fresh air but to listen. Stuck in morning traffic in downtown Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnipro River, she leans toward the whine of motorcycles weaving through the lanes. “Whenever I hear that noise, I cringe,” she says. “They sound just like the drones.”    It has been more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and over a decade since the war first erupted in Donbas. Kyiv has adapted to the new normal: constant sirens, interceptions and explosions on one side, cafés and bars buzzing with people on the other. Theaters sell out their shows and children have begun the new school year in shelters. At night, many families keep a spare mattress in hallways or bathrooms, following official advice to sleep between at least two walls, away from windows, in case a missile hits.   But beneath those routines lies a deeper unease — that the rest of Europe is tired, turning its attention away from the war and viewing it as something that should simply end, no matter the cost to Ukraine. And with that feeling comes the worry: that the European dream that once felt within reach is suddenly slipping away.  Avramenko, a 33-year-old policy advisor, feels this shift each time she returns to Kyiv across Poland, the main transit hub for Ukrainians heading in and out of the European Union. She now lives in Northern Europe, where she moved five years ago for her husband’s job, but has no plans to apply for EU citizenship — “Ukrainian already means European,” she says. Kyiv has adapted to the new normal: constant sirens, interceptions and explosions on one side, cafés and bars buzzing with people on the other. | Aleksandr Gusev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The 12-hour train ride from Kyiv to the EU frontier is crowded with women and children and haunted by the risk of drone strikes from the east. The men aboard are regarded with suspicion.  The border checks feel heavier than in the early days of Russia’s invasion. Polish officials ask why travelers are leaving Ukraine, how long they plan to stay, what their purpose is. Belongings are unpacked in search of contraband. “Back then, people opened their homes. Today, the questions are sharper,” Avramenko says.   She stresses she feels no resentment; like most Ukrainians, she is grateful for Poland’s support. But the shift captures a wider mood. Confidence in swift EU accession has sunk to its lowest point since the invasion, with just over half of Ukrainians believing membership will come in the next decade, down from more than 70 percent in 2022, according to an August poll.  Nearly one in five now think the EU will never admit Ukraine at all.  ‘WHY DON’T THEY CARE LIKE BEFORE?’    In 2022, balconies across Europe sprouted Ukrainian flags. Aid convoys streamed eastward. Strangers opened their doors to refugees.  Four days into the invasion, with Russian tanks closing in on Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Ukraine’s application for EU membership. “We are fighting for our rights, our freedoms, our lives — and for our survival,” he said in an address that week. “We are also fighting to be equal members of Europe. So now, prove that you are with us. Prove that you are Europeans, and then life will win over death, and light will win over darkness.”   A month later, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Kyiv to deliver the bloc’s first answer. “Ukraine belongs in the European family,” she declared, handing Zelenskyy a membership questionnaire. “This is where your path toward the European Union begins … we will accelerate this process as much as we can.”   That political backing is still there, but public enthusiasm has waned. As recently as April, von der Leyen mused that Ukraine could join the bloc before 2030. Yet as the accession process grinds forward, Ukrainians are watching nervously as public enthusiasm in parts of Europe falters, making the early momentum harder to sustain.   Neighboring Poland, one of Ukraine’s loudest political champions, is the starkest example.    A survey carried out in early summer found that only 35 percent of Poles back Kyiv’s EU accession, down from 85 percent in 2022. More than half of the population says they would prefer the war to end even if it means ceding territory to Russia.   Most Poles also believe that the scale of assistance offered to Ukrainian refugees has already gone too far, according to a study from the start of the year. That’s despite evidence refugees have had a positive impact on Poland’s economy by filling labor gaps and boosting growth.   The pattern repeats elsewhere in Europe.    In Germany, a majority still supports sending aid to Ukraine, but 52 percent believe Kyiv should give up occupied lands for peace. Across the continent, countries like Italy and France maintain official support, but their publics are increasingly skeptical about welcoming Ukraine as an EU member.   “Everyone asks: What’s happening in Poland, in Germany? Why don’t they care like before?” Avramenko says. She knows EU governments still pledge support, but she worries that for the broader public, Ukraine has become background noise.   That sense of fading attention abroad jars against the reality in Kyiv, where the war remains impossible to ignore.   On Sept. 7, Russia launched its largest air attack on Ukraine yet, with 810 drones and missiles setting fire to government offices and wrecking residential areas across the country. Only a fraction slipped past Kyiv’s dense air defenses — enough to kill three civilians, including a baby.   A week earlier, another strike tore through a Kyiv apartment block, killing 22, among them four children.   ‘WE CHOSE OUR FUTURE HERE‘ As dusk settles over the city’s Maidan Square, a few dozen demonstrators unfurl banners at the foot of the Independence Monument, their voices carrying through the warm evening air. Under martial law, mass protests against government policies have all but vanished; this is only the second one allowed to go ahead since the invasion.   Bohdan Fomin, a 30-year-old soldier from Mariupol, a city in Ukraine’s southeast, grips a handwritten sign demanding better treatment for troops. His hometown, once a thriving port of half a million people, was pulverized in 2022 and remains under Russian occupation — the reason he believes Ukraine must resist to the end, without concessions.   “If Ukraine is forced to cede territory, I will have no home to return to,” he says. “We chose our future more than 10 years ago, here, at Maidan. For us, it’s like getting back home — to Europe. Without that, I cannot imagine Ukraine.” Fomin is adamant the gathering is not against President Zelenskyy’s government. “Protests have been a part of our culture since our independence,” he says, nodding at the “dialog police” who watch quietly from the edges, tasked with speaking to the demonstrators rather than dispersing them. It’s a detail he cites as proof this is not a rebellion against the state.  Later that evening, Olena Herasymiuk joins the crowd. The 34-year-old poet’s works have become touchstones of the country’s wartime literature, and she has spent much of her adult life circling back to this square.  Family members and loved ones of fallen Ukrainian soldiers pay tribute to their memory at Independence Square on Sept. 27, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Danylo Dubchak/Frontliner/Getty Images As a student in 2014, she stood there when the first sharp cracks rang out. At first she didn’t realize they were sniper bullets slicing past her head. Then she saw people falling, injured and dead. That moment, she says, never left her. It pushed her into writing poetry as testimony and into a volunteer battalion where she evacuated the wounded from battlefields.    “Ukrainians are Europeans in every sense,” she says. “We don’t want to be slaves. We are free, liberal and open — and we have only one path, the European path.”    She has buried friends and written poems about them. One classmate, Daria, went to war as a drone engineer and never came back. To keep going, she clings to small rituals. “Every morning, I wake up, and my first thought is about the dead,” she says. “That’s why I make myself have a coffee. It’s a reminder of how to stay alive, how to stay human. Without that, I would go crazy.”    ‘IF THEY ARE ERASED, EUROPE LOSES THEM TOO’   The insistence on Ukraine’s being central to the story of Europe spills from the street and into the country’s culture and politics.  Across town from Maidan Square, in a bustling bar with live music, Lina Romanukha scrolls through her Instagram profile. It’s filled with collages cut from decade-old magazines and sketches drawn over the past three years. Both, she says, help her cope with the experience of war.  When Russian troops advanced on Kyiv in February 2022, she fled to her parents’ house in western Ukraine. Within weeks she returned to the capital, convinced she could be more useful here.  Now 41, the curator and artist describes nights under drone attacks as “Russian roulette.” At first she went to shelters; now she doesn’t bother. “You can’t live like that forever. If it comes to my building, it comes,” she says.    Her answer to that fatalism: culture. Romanukha curated an exhibition that digitizes Ukraine’s monuments — not only those in Kyiv or Lviv, but also in Crimea, Donbas and other territories now under Russian control.   In the halls of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra — the centuries-old monastery that has itself survived wars and sieges — visitors use virtual reality to step into reconstructions of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesus in Sevastopol, wander through the Khan Palace in Bakhchysarai, or stand before the Mariupol drama theater where hundreds were killed in 2022. Each reconstruction is paired with music by Ukrainian composers: It’s Romanukha’s way of insisting culture survives even if the stone and marble do not.    But for Romanukha, the project is not just about the past. It’s a way of telling Europeans that Ukraine’s heritage is also theirs, that their future belongs together. The very act of placing occupied sites on the map reads like a form of defiance. Russia may hold the land, but the memory — and the claim to Europe — remains Ukrainian. “These monuments are part of European civilization,” Lina says. “If they are erased, Europe loses them too.”   For all the uncertainty about her country’s future, she calls herself a “blind optimist.” She dreams of a Ukraine restored to its 1991 borders, rebuilt with EU and international help.   “It’s a dream,” she admits, but one she refuses to let go of.  

STRASBOURG — The head of the EU’s biggest political family has had a tough week keeping his party under control, with internal divisions on display on everything from climate goals to veggie burgers. On the day that Ursula von der Leyen faces two votes of no-confidence that could topple her and her Commission, Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party of which von der Leyen is a member, is also under pressure. Weber is still racking up wins — such as slashing green rules for businesses and pushing the Commission toward a tougher stance on migration — but efforts to satisfy all of his allies (actual and potential) are taking their toll, and this was on full display at the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg. A spokesperson for Manfred Weber did not reply to a request for comment for this article. In the span of just a few days, the EPP leader was undermined by his colleagues on key green legislation, publicly distanced himself from a food-labeling proposal pushed by parts of his party, and faced internal rebellion over the EU’s 2040 climate targets. During a tense internal EPP meeting on Wednesday, national delegations from France, Poland, Spain and Italy clashed with Weber and his German allies over how far to water down the EU’s 2040 emissions reduction target, according to two EPP officials who were briefed on the discussions. The 2040 target is a key part of von der Leyen’s green agenda, which the Germans support, albeit with a slightly lower target than the 90 percent originally proposed by the Commission. The other delegations either want to scrap the target altogether or drastically reduce it. Faced with a deadlock, the internal deliberations have been frozen until national EU leaders give their input at a European Council meeting in Brussels on Oct. 23, according to the two officials. Meanwhile, French EPP lawmakers scored a win in the European Parliament by pushing through a ban on the use of meat-related terms such as “burger,” “steak,” or “sausage” for plant-based and lab-grown products — triggering fury from Greens, liberals and Socialists. But instead of rallying behind the move, Weber distanced itself from it, going as far as to ridicule it. “That’s not at all a priority,” he said in a Tuesday press conference. “I think we have really other things to do … people are not stupid when they go to the supermarket.” The week’s biggest blow came ahead of high-stakes talks on Wednesday morning with Socialist leader Iratxe García and Renew chief Valérie Hayer on slashing green corporate reporting rules. Just before the meeting, Jörgen Warborn, the EPP’s lead negotiator on the issue, sent the other political groups an email, via the Legal Affairs Committee secretariat, which indicated that the EPP had decided to ditch the center left and instead team up with the far right to pass an aggressive simplification package to water down the green business requirements. While this is a classic political tactic to apply pressure, the move was not approved by Weber. Asked by POLITICO if he coordinated the move with the EPP boss, Warborn said: “No, it was my decision.” The Socialists were furious and the Weber meeting with García and Hayer ended in acrimony and no agreement. “While negotiations at leaders’ level were happening, the EPP was presenting compromises with the far right. This is unacceptable and shows the contradictions between EPP at the [European Parliament] and [the] Berlaymont,” said Andrea Macerias, García’s spokesperson. Warborn’s move worked, however: The Socialists accepted the EPP’s position a few hours later. Weber is also facing mounting pressure over negotiations on the EU’s long-term budget, as some sections of the EPP are threatening to torpedo a key part of von der Leyen’s plans. The disagreement focuses on pooling agriculture subsidies and funds for Europe’s poorest regions into single pots controlled by national capitals, which critics say would mean less money for farmers and less oversight from local authorities.  Negotiations between the EPP commissioners in charge of the file and EPP MEPs this week, steered by Weber in an attempt to unify the party, have failed to produce a compromise. Weber, trying to bridge the divide within his party, described this week’s disagreements as “discussing the issues among friends.”

STRASBOURG — Ursula von der Leyen celebrated her birthday in the European Parliament in Strasbourg — and was given a sweet treat by a Green MEP. Von der Leyen turned 67 on Wednesday and received a gift bag from Terry Reintke, a German MEP who is co-leader of the Greens in the Parliament. Asked what was in the bag, a spokesperson for Reintke said: “Terry offered her chocolate, and the hope is that the serotonins and dopamines will translate into good Green legislation in return.” It is unclear if the chocolate was made by the British confectionery brand Terry’s, but it was Terry herself who bought it. The Greens are not always big fans of von der Leyen, and are frustrated at seeing the Commission’s simplification agenda water down climate and environmental policies. The Parliament will on Thursday vote on two motions of no-confidence in von der Leyen’s leadership, put forward by far-right and far-left groups. If she loses (which is extremely unlikely), her Commission would fall, which would be a very bad belated birthday gift. In a debate on those motions on Monday, Reintke said the Greens aren’t happy with von der Leyen’s performance — but they know well that it could be a lot worse. In the midst of geopolitical turmoil, she said, “do we really, in this crucial moment, want an institutional crisis?” The Greens have plenty of complaints, from the “late reaction” to suffering in Gaza to climate initiatives being thrown “under the omnibus,” Reintke said. Yet, given that Parliament majorities won’t change, and conditions in the Council are “even worse,”  there’s no reason to expect improvement from firing the Commission.

Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, announced his resignation after nearly 50 years at the ice cream-maker, as a rift with parent company Unilever deepened over its stance on Israel and Gaza. “It’s with a broken heart that I’ve decided I can no longer, in good conscience, and after 47 years, remain an employee of Ben & Jerry’s. I am resigning from the company Ben and I started back in 1978. This is one of the hardest and most painful decisions I’ve ever made,” Greenfield said in a letter shared by co-founder Ben Cohen on Wednesday. “His legacy deserves to be true to our values, not silenced by Magnum Global,” Cohen added. Greenfield’s departure comes as the company presses for independence ahead of Unilever’s planned listing of its global ice cream business in November, amid mounting friction over Ben & Jerry’s outspoken stance against Israel over its war in Gaza and its position toward Palestinians in the West Bank. The dispute stems from Ben & Jerry’s decision in 2021 to stop selling products in Israeli settlements, a move Unilever opposed. Despite a merger agreement designed to safeguard the brand’s activism, Greenfield claimed the company’s independence had eroded. “It’s profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone,” he said in his resignation letter. A spokesperson for The Magnum Ice Cream Company, Unilever’s ice cream unit, said the company was “grateful” for Greenfield’s contributions but added that it had made efforts to engage both founders on preserving Ben & Jerry’s “values-based positions in the world.” Ben & Jerry’s, founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, has long championed causes from LGBTQ+ rights to fighting against climate change. Co-founder Cohen has been a polarizing figure for years due to his outspoken activism, in recent years after backing controversial critiques of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.