The President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, celebrated the agreement reached at the UN climate summit (COP30) on Sunday as "a global agreement to keep the 1.5°C limit within reach and abandon fossil fuels," despite the final document not mentioning them, as the Europeans had demanded.
"We now have a global agreement to keep the 1.5°C limit within reach and abandon fossil fuels," the European leader said in a social media message.
In a statement, the European Executive added that the EU and its member states will join an alliance of more than 80 countries, led by Brazil, "for the transition away from fossil fuels."
Countries gathered at the climate summit in Belém (Brazil) approved a final document by consensus on Saturday, which does not contain an explicit reference to fossil fuels, despite the insistence of the European Union (EU) and countries like Colombia. However, it calls for increasing the ambition of actions to combat global warming.
"The great efforts of the EU contributed to reaching an agreement at the COP30 in Belém," the statement said. At one of them, COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the need for a "transition" away from fossil fuels was established for the first time.
In turn, the COP30 text recognizes that climate change "is a common concern of humanity" and reaffirms the commitment of countries to the Paris Agreement and the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C.
The EU's communication pointed to the creation of a new "global implementation accelerator" that "will provide a global response to the mitigation gap and accelerate implementation across all sectors to keep 1.5°C within reach."
Starting with the shared task of implementing the global "Mutirão" roadmaps for climate action.
"The parties also agreed to accelerate the implementation of the Just Transition pathways towards the 1.5°C goal. These pathways recognize the importance of human rights, labor rights, gender equality, as well as the inclusive participation of stakeholders and social dialogue," the European statement highlighted.
The EU's Climate Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, acknowledged before the vote in the plenary that the text is not as "ambitious" as they would have liked, but that it is a step "in the right direction."
Von der Leyen added in her message that the bloc "will stay the course in its work of global leadership."
After intense negotiations that extended into the early hours of the morning, the explicit reference was left out of the text due to the outright refusal of Arab countries to discuss the issue, although the decisions made at other COPs are "recognized" in a general sense.
