The U.S. reputation as a climate negotiation spoiler only recovered in the latter years of the Obama administration. It ended the night Donald Trump pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in last year's election. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Climate’s Brexit moment Europe sees in Trump’s exodus an opportunity to strike an alliance with China and take the lead in implementing the Paris accord.

In public, European leaders blasted and bemoaned Donald Trump's decision Thursday to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.

In private, a different sentiment is emerging among policymakers and politicians on the Continent — relief.

It's a relief, in part, to return to a familiar dynamic. During decades of negotiations over emissions pacts from Kyoto to Paris, America mostly played spoiler. The reprisal of that role creates, in the view of EU officials, fresh diplomatic and policy opportunities.

Call it the Brexit Effect, Part II. While the British vote to leave the bloc last June was a shock to the European system, for the Continent the result almost a year on is, for the time being, a stronger sense of EU cohesion and a revived Franco-German partnership, as Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put it in an interview Thursday.

During decades of negotiations over emissions pacts from Kyoto to Paris, America mostly played spoiler.

Similarly, in this view, Trump's move on Thursday removes — as the U.K. vote did — a perennially problematic partner, provides fresh glue to keep Europeans united on climate policy and opens up fresh possibilities. The same day, Brussels trumpeted a new axis on climate with Beijing during the EU-China summit in the Belgian capital.

"Today's announcement has galvanized us rather than weakened us, and this vacuum will be filled by new broad committed leadership," said Miguel Arias Cañete, the European commissioner for energy and climate action.

'Impetus for EU'

"The effect that it has on the other parties is for now only positive," one Western climate negotiator said, asking not to be named. "It seems that it reinforces the willingness and resolve to implement Paris."

However improbably, authoritarian and polluted China suddenly plays the role of defender of a rules-based international order including on climate policy. And the EU is allowing itself something of a geopolitical strut. In the past, the European Union supported efforts to stem global warming by reducing emissions but often found itself playing third fiddle behind the two bigger powerhouses: the U.S. and China. Now Brussels has a chance to change that.

"One thing that has been very clear since Paris is that the EU needs to do more, and this really gives the impetus for the EU to do more," said Andrew Higham, who helped draft and deliver the Paris agreement and now works as chief executive of Mission 2020, a collaborative aimed at cutting climate pollution. "It's now forged a very good relationship with China."

That's not to say that meeting the Paris agreement's goals of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and eventually 1.5 degrees, will be easier without the world's second-biggest emitter. But under Trump, who denounced global warming as "bullshit" and a Chinese-inspired "hoax," America was unlikely to be a cooperative partner even if it had stayed within the confines of a non-binding agreement.

To those who are looking on the bright side of the Trump exodus, it'll be easier to maintain the otherwise broad international consensus on climate policy with the Americans outside the tent.

“In the absence of the U.S., the European Union together with China and most likely Canada will be required to take more of a leadership role than before,” German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said Thursday.

Prickly partners

The Americans (with occasional assists from a few countries like Australia and Canada) have long been part of the climate world's awkward squad.

Bill Clinton signed the 1997 Kyoto accord, but neither he nor George W. Bush put it to the Senate for ratification. The U.S. reputation as a climate spoiler changed in the latter years of the Obama administration. That period ended November 9, when stunned delegates at the Marrakech climate talks gathered around television sets in their hotels to watch Trump pull ahead of Hillary Clinton in last year's election.

While climate change policies are divisive inside the EU — Poland and Greece, among others, cling to coal and Ireland protects its agriculture sector — Europeans broadly agree that global warming is a problem.

“Anyone who is not that absurd and denialist and backward-looking is inheriting a leadership position by default, which is pretty much the situation for the EU,” said Mark Lynas, a former climate change advisor to the Maldives president and now a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science. “The EU isn’t really in a fit state to lead on anything because it’s so disorganized and divided these days. But on climate there’s pretty much a unity of perspective which exists with not much else.”

Bill Clinton signed the 1997 Kyoto accord, but neither he nor George W. Bush put it to the Senate for ratification.

Instead of opening the door for others to backtrack, Trump's wavering seems to have galvanized more commitments, including from businesses, governors and mayors in the U.S. China has used it to thumb its nose at Washington, tap into huge green business opportunities and strengthen its soft power in the developing world, climate experts said. India, Vietnam, Malaysia and others seem to be following its lead.

Because the agreement is already ratified and in effect, the earliest an American withdrawal could become effective is the day after the next U.S. election in 2020, leaving room for a new U.S. president to possibly make another U-turn.

Meanwhile, supporters of Paris vow to keep plowing ahead.

"In the longer term we can't solve climate change without the United States," Lynas said. "U.S. participation is essential, but it’s better that that participation is done in a positive way."

Kalina Oroschakoff contributed reporting.