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.
