BRUSSELS — The Trump administration’s campaign to kill the world’s first global carbon price for shipping upended internal EU climate discussions on Tuesday after Greece prevented the bloc from reendorsing the embattled levy.
At a meeting of the International Maritime Organization last week, Athens dropped its support for the fee and other measures meant to reduce planet-warming pollution from shipping, bowing to pressure from industry and the U.S.
On Tuesday, EU environment ministers approved the bloc’s joint negotiating position for this year’s COP30 climate summit — largely a rubber-stamping exercise — with significant delay after Greece initially vetoed the text over a reference to the IMO agreement.
Five diplomats present at the talks told POLITICO that Athens objected to a single passage, the final paragraph of the text, that “welcome[d]” the IMO measures “as the first legally binding global sectoral climate regulation that will contribute to the reduction of emissions from shipping.”
