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The EU is holding back on signing a joint declaration on climate action with China at a leaders’ summit this month, adding to tensions between the two sides over trade and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
EU officials said Beijing had made multiple requests for a declaration on their mutual climate commitment following a mid-July summit between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Chinese President Xi Jinping to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations.
But Brussels had refused to agree on a communiqué unless China pledged greater efforts to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. “I understand and recognise the Chinese push for a declaration [by] the presidents for diplomatic value but that in itself for the [EU] is not enough,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told the Financial Times.
“There is only merit in having a declaration from our perspective if there are also content nuts to be cracked and ambition to be displayed,” he said.
A joint communiqué would have echoes of the so-called Sunnylands statement made by the US and China ahead of the UN climate conference in Dubai in 2023.
Since then, Donald Trump’s move to pull the US out of the Paris accord to limit global warming has put pressure on both China and the EU to step up their climate pledges.
Both the EU and China must submit an interim goal to the UN for 2035 ahead of the UN COP30 summit in Brazil in November.
China has made the most progress among leading economies in rolling out clean energy and transport, but still accounts for about a third of the world’s emissions as a result of its heavy reliance on coal for energy.
“We do feel [that] it is needed that other actors, not least China, are stepping up their game,” Hoekstra said.
A representative from China’s mission to the EU said the group did not have “first-hand information” regarding the potential climate discussion agenda for the two high-level dialogues. China’s ecology and environment ministry was not immediately reachable for comment.
Last week, the EU proposed an emissions reduction goal of 90 per cent by 2040, compared with 1990 levels. But it has come under criticism from campaigners for allowing a provision for up to 3 per cent of the savings to come from buying carbon credits overseas from 2036.
Brussels is also under heavy lobbying from industry and some key countries in the bloc to slow the pace of its green agenda in the face of the US trade war and pressure from President Trump to weaken its rules.
Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent, partly as a result of its proximity to the melting Arctic, and this summer has struggled with record temperatures. China is also being hit by increasingly extreme weather events, including both floods and droughts.
The EU needed to be “clear eyed” when engaging with China, said Manon Dufour, executive director at the climate think-tank E3G. But a “failure to engage properly” could prompt China to deepen bilateral commitments with other countries which were less committed to climate action.
A joint statement could commit the two governments to greater collaboration on the financial system and multilateral development bank reform or setting standards for green technologies, she said.
Climate policy advisers agree that in the absence of the US, there is an opportunity for the EU and China to display leadership on the global stage at the UN climate summit.
“The success of COP30 depends on high quality [2035 goals] from the EU and China,” said Linda Kachler, executive director of the think-tank Strategic Perspectives and a former climate adviser to the UN. “We need to see a race to the top, not to the bottom in terms of ambition.”
With additional reporting by Gloria Li in Hong Kong
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