On the occasion of the second state visit to China by French President Emmanuel Macron, France and China jointly reaffirmed their full support for the Paris Climate Agreement on Wednesday 6 November in Beijing – which they consider to be “an irreversible process”.
This message was the response of both partners to the formal notification of the United States’ request for unilateral withdrawal from this global agreement concluded in 2015 (see EUROPE 12363/9). Without mentioning the United States, Emmanuel Macron said he regretted “the negative attitude of some countries”.
The French President had turned this visit into a strong agenda for multilateralism. He and Xi Jinping expressed their willingness to “inject political impetus into international cooperation” in order to ensure a full, effective implementation of the Paris Agreement guided by the principles of the UNFCCC.
A Franco-Chinese initiative before COP26. Speaking to the press, Mr Macron assured that Xi Jinping had expressed “his agreement to move forward” in the fight against climate change. The objective is “to coordinate our agendas and take a strong initiative that can be held before the next COP, the Glasgow COP [COP26 in 2020: editor’s note], which will enhance our commitments on both sides and strengthen the Paris agenda”, he said.
According to him, “the subject of economy and investment, the subject of climate and the trade agenda will be the focus of the coming months of the EU-China relationship”.
Cooperation for the conservation of biodiversity. The leaders of France and China moreover agreed to cooperate to halt biodiversity loss – a commitment reflected in the Beijing Call for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change, given that China will host COP15 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity on the post-2020 global framework in October 2020 (see other news).
See the Beijing Call, published on the Elysée website: https://bit.ly/2NK5E8t (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)