But there is a risk that EU unity on international climate issues could collapse before next year’s COP32.
Over the next 12 months, four of the bloc’s five largest countries – France, Spain, Italy and Poland – will hold hotly contested elections where far-right and populist parties are expected to score high. Politicians from these camps made clear their disdain for the UN climate process during a debate in the European Parliament last month.
“This COP will be a failure, like the previous ones,” said Marie-Luce Brasier-Clain, a member of parliament for the far-right National Rally party, whose candidate Marine Le Pen is leading the French presidential election.
“This is because you are pursuing an ideological agenda that cannot be implemented, based on the Paris accords, without massive deindustrialization and social upheaval,” she told EU officials present at the debate.
“Summit after summit we see leaders taking private jets to explain that this big environmental problem is actually caused by tractors, that’s what they’re telling farmers,” said Mireia Borrás Pabón, a lawmaker for Spain’s far-right Vox party, which hopes to form a coalition with conservatives after November’s election.
“Their priority, it seems, would be to eliminate fossil fuels… What does that mean? It means everything costs more,” she said. “In your opinion, who is the COP really for? Because it is clear that it is not the Europeans.”
Gn world
