COP 23, which ended on Saturday 18 November, allowed the 195 parties at the negotiating table to detail the rules for implementing the first universal climate agreement and to give themselves one year – a year of dialogue throughout 2018 – to finalise the said rules and procedures and to assess the level of their emissions. For the European negotiators, this was progress, modest certainly but undeniable and encouraging.
This transition COP, the first since Donald Trump announced the...