EU wrangles over negotiating stance for COP28 climate summit

BRUSSELS – European Union countries’ climate ministers meet on Monday to decide the bloc’s negotiating position for this year’s COP28 summit – but they are still split over some key issues, like how hard to push for a global deal to phase out fossil fuels.

The EU is typically one of

the most ambitious negotiators

at the annual United Nations climate talks, where nearly 200 countries negotiate efforts to fight global warming. This year’s COP28 conference begins on Nov 30 in Dubai.

A central decision will be whether countries at the COP agree for the first time to phase out fossil fuels. Burning coal, oil and gas produces greenhouse gases that are the main cause of climate change.

Around 10 of the EU’s 27 member countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Slovenia, want the bloc to

demand a phase-out of all fossil fuels

, diplomats said.

A similar number – including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland and Slovakia – are more cautious.

They want a phase-out only of “unabated” fossil fuels, leaving a window for countries to keep burning coal, gas and oil if they use technology to “abate” – meaning capture – the resulting emissions.

EU states must agree on their negotiating stance unanimously, meaning one government can block it.

The split reflects simmering global tensions. EU states opposing a full phase-out include poorer nations, which fear the impact of weaning their economies off fossil fuels. Fossil fuel producers and consumers like Saudi Arabia have blocked efforts to agree on a phase-out in recent meetings, including this year’s

Group of 20

summi

t, and are expected to raise similar resistance at the COP28 summit.

A draft of the EU’s negotiating position, seen by Reuters, would call for a “global phase-out of fossil fuels and a peak in their consumption already in the near term”. The brackets around “unabated” indicate EU countries have not yet agreed on the word.

Other major emitters are watching, and some diplomats said a weakened stance from the EU – the world’s third-biggest economy – could kill off hopes of an ambitious COP28 deal.

“If the EU fails to do so, how can we expect an ambitious (COP28) outcome?” one EU diplomat said.

Fossil fuel subsidies are another sore point, with rich Western nations, including France and the Netherlands, seeking an EU call to phase them out by 2025. Fossil fuel-reliant economies like Poland do not want a date.

Countries will also decide whether to announce publicly that the EU expects to overshoot its legally binding target to slash net greenhouse gas emissions 55 per cent by 2030, as a result of the carbon dioxide-cutting policies the EU passed in the last two years. REUTERS