Europe will not settle for anything less than a robust, ambitious and binding agreement on climate change at UN talks in Paris later this year, the EU’s climate chief has said.

“Today’s a very good day. The EU is equipped with a very solid position for Paris,” said Miguel Cañete after environment ministers agreed the bloc’s joint position on the climate summit, overcoming objections from coal-reliant Poland.

“We stand united, that is of the upmost importance, and ready to conclude an ambitious robust, binding global climate deal, and we will settle for nothing less.”

However, the EU said it was concerned about the lack of substantial progress on the text for an agreement at Paris, which it warned still needed considerable work. Green groups said that the EU was not doing enough.

The bloc’s joint position published on Friday calls for five yearly reviews of countries’ carbon emission cuts after any deal is reached in December, something many parties are now calling for.

It also says the nearly 200 countries meeting in Paris should commit to a long-term vision for “climate neutrality and climate resilience in the second half of this century”. The phrase “climate neutrality” replaced the word “decarbonisation” in an earlier version of the position, emphasising action on all greenhouse gases rather than just carbon dioxide emissions.

In a new addition to the text, other countries around the world were called upon to reduce their emissions to near zero or below by 2100. The G7 agreed in June to phase out all fossil fuels by the end of the century.

Cañete said the EU was asking all countries to peak their emissions by 2020 to avoid dangerous global warming, in line with a report published by the UN’s climate science panel the IPCC.

The EU said that the issue of transferring funds from developed to developing countries to help them with climate change would be of great importance at Paris.

“Public finance alone will not be enough to meet the challenge and we also need to attract better private climate finance,” Cañete said.

Green groups said the environment ministers’ position today still held out the hope of of avoiding dangerous warming, but more was needed.

Greenpeace EU energy policy adviser Jiri Jerabek said: “The EU’s position is still far from what is needed to reach an effective global deal.”

Geneviève Pons Deladrière, director of the WWF European policy office, said: “As climate change is speeding up and getting worse, it’s regrettable that EU environment ministers failed to spell out how the EU intends to increase its own climate and energy targets.”

However, Amber Rudd, the UK energy and climate secretary, who was at the meeting, said she was pleased with the agreement: “I welcome today’s agreement, which the UK has been driving forward and will enable businesses to remain competitive and grow as we move to a low carbon future.”



Activists in Brussels staged a tug-of-war contest between fossil fuels and renewable energy, and called on the ministers to go further than their commitment of cutting emissions 40% by 2030. Those on the renewable energy side won.