After failing to get some of their main asks at the COP30 climate summit in November, European Union environment ministers are considering a new strategy for international climate negotiations which they describe as “less naive”, and more “realistic” and “pragmatic”.
On their way into a meeting to discuss the strategy in Cyprus last Friday, several ministers and officials hinted that the EU should take a tougher line in the United Nations (UN) climate talks and make more use of its power as a climate finance donor and trade partner.
At COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém, the EU pushed – along with other countries including the UK and some Latin American and small island nations – for stronger outcomes on transitioning away from fossil fuels, including a global roadmap. But after fractious all-night talks, the group was left disappointed as big fossil-fuel producers and most African states did not come on board.
Last week, reflecting on those results, Belgian climate minister Jean-Luc Crucke told reporters that Europe should be “realistic” and “better prepared”. Speaking in French, he said multilateralism should not mean that “it is always the same people who contribute while others do not”.
Hungary’s state secretary for environmental affairs Aniko Raisz said the EU must learn the lessons of COP30. The EU “has nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be shy of, we are not lacking ambition”. But, she added, “we need realism, we need pragmatism and we need to show that we are competitive”.
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According to Radio France Internationale, an official from the office of French climate minister Monique Barbut told reporters before the meeting in Cyprus that the EU must be “less naive” and “more assertive, more demanding and more transactional if we want to have an impact in these negotiations”.
“We are in a tougher world where the European Union, when it comes to climate negotiations, is more isolated,” the quoted official said, before questioning whether the EU should “continue to demonstrate climate and financial solidarity with countries” that have not met their obligations under the Paris Agreement.
“We have tools like trade agreements,” whose implementation could be conditional on compliance with the Paris accord, the unnamed source added.
Speaking after the ministers’ meeting, European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the EU “is financing by far the most of climate action abroad” but “unfortunately, solidarity and reciprocity do not always go hand in hand. and that has to change”.
According to analysis by think-tank ODI Global, the US has never paid its fair share towards rich countries’ climate finance commitments and, under the Trump Administration, has now pulled back from climate finance almost entirely, leaving the EU as by far the biggest provider.
Trade and finance as leverage
Discussions are still at an early stage, details of the new strategy have yet to be published and the European Commission did not respond to a request for comment. But a source who speaks regularly to EU officials said they expect the bloc to become more selective in who it gives climate finance to, placing greater weight on the EU’s own commercial and geopolitical interests.
The source told Climate Home News that a higher proportion of funding may be given on a country-to-country basis, rather than through UN climate funds like the Green Climate Fund (GCF) where it is harder to control. Several European nations recently blocked Oman from getting GCF climate finance for an early warning system, sparking accusations of “discrimination” and “political considerations” from developing countries.
Trade could also be used as leverage. The EU’s recent trade deals with New Zealand, Kenya, Chile, India and the South American Mercosur bloc all included clauses specifying that both sides should implement the Paris climate agreement. Those provisions have yet to be used, despite backtracking on climate action from the New Zealand government.
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At UN shipping talks in October, the Trump administration used threats of tariffs and visa restrictions on individual negotiators to achieve its aim of delaying green regulations, outmanoeuvring the EU and its allies.
“In a world where Trump is inserting clauses into trade agreements and using bullying tactics, it’s important for Europe to look at how it can – in a values-based way – use all of its assets too,” former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan told Climate Home News.
Morgan, one of the EU’s lead negotiating figures at COP27, COP28 and COP29, said the EU should integrate climate into all areas of foreign and economic policy and combine trade, investment, climate and energy security files. She also urged the bloc’s members to hire more high-level climate diplomats.
After a change in the German government, Morgan’s climate envoy position was abolished and now no major EU country has a climate diplomat of ministerial or deputy ministerial rank, making it harder to organise meetings with foreign ministers.
The EU’s diplomats in the European External Action Service should collaborate more with the European Commission divisions dealing with climate (DG CLIMA) and international partnerships (DG INTPA) so that the EU can “speak with one voice in capitals and internationally”, Morgan said.
But, she suggested, “Trump-like transactionalism should be avoided” as “countries need to come together to build the clean economy, not divide and rule to keep the old”.
Too transactional already?
The EU has already faced accusations that it is too transactional and doubling down on this strategy could backfire. At COP30, negotiators from the world’s poorest countries, African nations and small islands criticised EU attempts to trade promises on adaptation finance for commitments to cut emissions. “Adaptation is a right, not a bargaining chip,” said Africa’s then lead negotiator Richard Muyungi.
Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home News: “It is unfortunate that the EU is seeing a fractured world and choosing to be transactional and ‘pragmatic’, rather than reinforcing their commitment to international cooperation and a multilateral regime based on justice and reparations.” She added that, as the EU has not yet fully eliminated its own dependence on fossil fuels, this strategy is “hypocritical”.
The Asia Society Policy Institute’s Li Shuo also warned the EU against taking a harder stance. “In turbulent times, the line between assertiveness and hypocrisy grows thin,” said the China specialist, adding that the EU’s new strategy could further isolationism and damage its relationships.
He said the EU should engage better with other powers like China to advance its interests. Other than an EU-China summit in July 2025, there has been little recent climate diplomacy between the two, despite hopes their partnership would deepen after Trump decided to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.
The post After disappointing COP30, EU mulls “less naive” strategy for climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
After disappointing COP30, EU mulls “less naive” strategy for climate talks
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These efforts ultimately paid off: during the Bonn climate negotiations in June 2025, one draft text included the idea for a new institutional arrangement. One of the options in the draft text was for a “toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network [or] mechanism”.
![Paragraph 28 of the JTWP text published 25 June 2025. The text reads "28. Options for further implementation of the United Arab Emirates just transition work programme Option 1: Improving existing modalities Option 2: New institutional arrangements [toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network, mechanism] Option 3: Defer decision to 2026"](https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/para28-1024x334.png)
This inclusion was broadly welcomed as a “big win” for civil society groups, although parties acknowledged that more needed to be done to flesh out the idea.
Going into COP30, civil society groups continued to push the idea of creating a BAM, with protests, banners and badges visible around the venue.
Early in negotiations, the G77 and China – a large coalition of developing countries at UN climate talks – put forward their own proposal for a just transition “mechanism”. This, they suggested, could provide technical assistance, support international cooperation and help to foster partnerships in an effort to address implementation gaps.
Their proposal faced initial pushback from developed-country parties including Norway, the UK and others, who opposed it due to concerns that it would duplicate existing systems and require additional funding.
Developed countries also opposed the use of the term “