In the wake of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday 20 January and his announcement that the United States would officially withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate, Europe was quick to react.
On the social network LinkedIn, the European Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth, Wopke Hoekstra, lamented on Tuesday 21 January “a truly unfortunate development” on the part of “the world’s largest economy and one of our closest allies in the fight against climate change”.
He nevertheless pledged to continue working with the United States and international partners to tackle “the pressing issue of climate change”, and reiterated that the Paris Agreement has “strong foundations and is here to stay”.
In her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos (see other news), the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, even described the Agreement as “the best hope” for “all humanity”.
Without citing the withdrawal of the United States, she affirmed that “Europe will stay the course, and keep working with all nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming”.
The Paris Agreement on climate change was ratified by 195 parties in 2015, enshrining the desire to continue taking action to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This is the second time that Trump has withdrawn his country from the agreement, having already done so during his first term in office.
At the European Parliament, a number of MEPs had anticipated and communicated in advance, on Monday 20 January, the imminent withdrawal of the new US administration from the Paris Agreement. This is particularly the case for the European Greens, but also for the EPP’s spokesman on environmental policy, the German Peter Liese (see EUROPE 13561/10), who warned against “giving up” on international climate policy.
The Renew Europe coordinator on the Parliamentary Environment Committee, Pascal Canfin (French), also said that Europeans had a responsibility to “stand firm” in the face of what he described as an “offensive” by the Trump administration.
“Beyond the obvious climate emergency, it is in our strategic interest to continue to implement the ‘Green Deal’, to build the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ and to produce more decarbonised energy in Europe”, he added.
At a press conference in Strasbourg, the chair of the S&D group, Iratxe García Pérez, called for the change of political direction in the United States to be seized as an “opportunity” to “reaffirm our values and for the EU to take a leading role”. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)