PARIS \u2013 <\/p>\n
The European Union must be \u201cless naive\u201d and \u201cmore transactional\u201d in global climate negotiations and consider using financial and trade leverage to assert its position, the French ecology ministry said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The comments came before a meeting of EU environment ministers in Cyprus this week to review last November\u2019s U.N. climate summit, which ended with a watered-down pact that omitted EU demands over fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
Monique Barbut, France\u2019s minister for ecological transition, had already expressed disappointment over the outcome and said the EU must be prepared to \u201cassert its red lines\u201d and reject similar proposals in future.<\/p>\n
The EU must be \u201cless naive\u201d and \u201cmore assertive, more demanding, and more transactional if we want to have an impact in these negotiations,\u201d her office said ahead of the Cyprus meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a tougher world where the European Union, when it comes to climate negotiations, is more isolated,\u201d a senior source from Barbut\u2019s office told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cStates that had previously been somewhat hesitant to speak out are doing so much more freely since the American withdrawal\u201d from the global fight against climate change, the source added.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump has withdrawn the world\u2019s largest economy from the Paris Agreement on global warming and the bedrock U.N. climate treaty that underpins it.<\/p>\n
His administration sent nobody to the last U.N. climate summit in Brazil, where the EU\u2019s call for the inclusion of a \u201croadmap\u201d away from fossil fuels was left out of the final deal.<\/p>\n
The EU ended up accepting it instead of scuttling a deal altogether.<\/p>\n
The EU is the largest payer of climate finance \u2014 money to help developing countries transition to a low-carbon future \u2014 and Barbut\u2019s office suggested the 27-nation bloc could use this in a more \u201cpolitical\u201d manner.<\/p>\n
The source also questioned if the EU should \u201ccontinue to demonstrate climate and financial solidarity with countries\u201d that have failed to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n
These include updating their national pledges for cutting emissions, the latest round of which were due last year.<\/p>\n
But more than 60 countries \u2014 some of them major climate finance recipients such as India, Egypt, and the Philippines \u2014 have still not turned in their latest plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have tools like trade agreements,\u201d whose implementation can be conditional on compliance with the Paris Agreement, the minister\u2019s office added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2013 The European Union must be \u201cless naive\u201d and \u201cmore transactional\u201d in global climate negotiations and consider…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2311,2000,299,5187,1699,36,165504],"class_list":["post-740817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-climate-change","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-u-n"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116010017353833502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}