UN Secretary-General to request EU do more to lead on climate change

In response to his remarks, four ministers from four EU member states will outline their governments’ priorities. The panel will explore how, through providing global leadership, the EU can establish standards, maintain technological leadership, and set an example of combining emissions reductions with maintaining prosperity and delivering on sustainable growth. They include:

•  Ann Linde, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sweden
•  Michał Kurtyka, Minister of Climate and Environment, Poland
•  Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transition, France
•  Andreas Feicht, State Secretary, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Germany

The event will be streamed live on ECFR’s home page.

In his address, the Secretary-General is expected to clearly ask the EU to continue and boost its climate leadership and will lay out a range of substantive calls-to-action on key issues – both in the near-term as covid response and recovery measures take shape, and in the longer-term – including:

•  phasing-out coal and fossil fuels
•  climate finance
•  resilience and adaption

This speech will follow keynote climate speeches the Secretary-General has given in China, India and Japan in recent months.

Leading ECFR’s European Power programme and climate work, Susi Dennison has said:

“The European Green Deal has drawn attention both at home in Europe and internationally. ECFR’s public opinion surveys in 2020 show that in every member state support for more attention to be paid to tackling climate change has grown this year – with those who have grown more supportive through the corona crisis outstripping those who are less so in every country covered. But the implementation beneath the high-level promises is the tricky part. As many parts of the EU head into a punishing recession, and the pandemic continues to overload European healthcare systems, keeping emissions reductions and investments in green technology development on the top of the agenda will require constant vigilance from EU leaders as we head to COP26.”

Speaking to ECFR’s upcoming work on China and climate, Janka Oertel, director of ECFR’s Asia programme has stated:

“Beijing has now pledged a clear target for decarbonizing its economy. If followed through, this will be one of the most important individual contributions to tackling climate change and will create momentum for ambitious action worldwide. At the same time, it will also exert pressure on Europe to remain able to compete in the global economy of the future, including on green technologies and standard setting. Just because economies will become greener, Europe’s existing grievances with regard to China’s market-distorting practices will not magically disappear, they may even become more pronounced.”

The event will be streamed live on ECFR’s home page.

About ECFR’s climate work:

ECFR is working on a series of climate-related research and analysis, with topics including shaping the future of Europe’s climate policy in light of the enhanced systemic rivalry with China; geopolitics of the Green Deal; North Africa and the European Green Deal; and mapping the national politics around the green deal and resilient recovery across the 27 EU member states. More details will be available and shared with the press within the next days and in the following weeks. 
 
All policy briefs, commentaries, events, and other products will be available on ECFR’s website ecfr.eu. 

The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. This report, like all publications of the European Council on Foreign Relations, represents only the views of its author.